


































* 

























I 














Hppletons’ 
Gown anO Gountrp 
library 

No. 230 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH 
















- 






















THE FREEDOM 
OF HENRY MEREDYTH 



M. HAMILTON 

AUTHOR OF MCLEOD OF THE CAMERONS, 
A SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE, ETC. 




NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND 

I 




' ’ TWC COflES RECEIVED 


4301 


Copyright, 1897, 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 




THE FREEDOM 

OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


PART I. 

CHAPTER I. 

When - Henry Meredyth gained his divorce suit 
against his wife, with costs against Major Arkwright- 
Gage, the co-respondent, there was a certain amount of 
excitement among his friends. He had gone to Norway 
immediately after the scandal, and had consequently, in 
the rush of the season, faded a little out of people’s 
minds, hut he now found himself revived. 

There had been no points of special interest about 
the case; the rumours that a disgraceful countercharge 
was to he made by the opposite side had proved to 
he only rumours, arousing undue expectations of ex- 
citement. On the contrary, there had been no de- 
fence. 

Nevertheless, when Mrs. Fraser-Latimer and Lady 
Grace Bruce went out to a drawing-room tea after leav- 
ing the court, they found themselves centres of interest, 
before which the charms of various befeathered debu- 
tantes faded into insignificance. 

Lady Grace and Mrs. Fraser-Latimer had considered 
1 


2 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

it their duty to be present at the trial as friends of the 
injured husband, hut they proved disappointingly de- 
void of fresh particulars of any kind. 

“ So Pat Meredyth is a free man again,” said Lady 
Dawley, a pretty young woman, who was in charge of 
one of the drawing-room debutantes. 

“ With something like the traditional twopence- 
halfpenny in his pocket,” said Lady Grace Bruce. 

“ Is everything hers? ” 

“ Every penny. Pat Meredyth was broke before he 
was two-and-twenty, and then they married him off to 
this heiress, and they tied up her money pretty success- 
fully first.” 

The man who gave this piece of information was 
married to a Meredyth cousin, and therefore an au- 
thority. 

“Poor fellow!” said Mrs. Fraser-Latimer, who gen- 
erally got the box seat in Meredyth’s coach, and was 
really sorry; “what will become of him?” 

“ Oh, heTl go to the devil as imperturbably as he 
has been accustomed to go everywhere else,” said an- 
other man. “ Pat Meredyth won’t cry out when he’s 
hurt.” 

“Wasn’t he worth seeing in court?” said Lady 
Grace; “ dressed and perfumed to the highest pitch of 
perfection, answering questions in his slow, dreamy 
way, with his air of not letting himself be perturbed 
by such a trifle as a divorce.” 

“ I shouldn’t he surprised if he turned up at your 
show this evening, Lady Dawley,” said somebody else, 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


3 


“ braving it out, you know. It would be rather like 
him.” 

“ He’s not half a bad fellow,” a man said; “ pity he’s 
such a fool! ” 

“ He never cared for his wife,” said Mrs. Fraser- 
Latimer; “ he’s a good friend of mine, but I must say 
he neglected her shamefully.” 

There was a half -concealed sensation of amusement 
at her words. If Henry Meredyth had neglected his 
wife, Mrs. Fraser-Latimer was supposed to have had 
a good deal to say to it. 

But Mrs. Latimer was a model of virtue as to words, 
by which means she gained for herself a certain latitude 
as to actions. 

When Meredyth’s wife was discussed, she spoke of 
her after a fashion of severe virtue. 

She had known what would come, she said; she 
had feared it. Evelyn Meredyth had always been so 
ill-regulated and excitable. She would find her punish- 
ment in Major Arkwright- Gage. 

“ But she was very fond of her children,” said Lady 
Dawley. 

“ In her way, yes. Heaven help them now! ” 

"Why, surely you don’t think Pat will ill-treat 
them? ” 

“ Ill-treat them! ” Mrs. Fraser-Latimer said with a 
laugh. " Oh, certainly not. Only indulge them with 
a little wholesome neglect. I suppose their mother 
will provide for them; otherwise they will have to 
starve.” 


4 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

“ Won’t his brother, Lord Meredyth, do something? 
AVon’t Pat’s eldest hoy come in for the title?” 

“I suppose he will. But Lord Meredyth and Pat 
never hit it off.” 

“ The only thing,” said Mrs. Latimer with decision, 
“is for Pat to marry again, and to marry money. He 
was horn to be a bachelor, and it’s a pity, but it’s abso- 
lutely necessary.” 

“ And it’s a question,” said Lady Grace, “ if the four 
children won’t weight the scale rather heavily against 
his somewhat elderly charms.” 

The Meredyth cousin murmured a regretful aside, 
reminiscent of Mr. Fraser-Latimer’s unfortunate exist- 
ence. 

“ If Pat can make up his mind to the accent,” said 
Mrs. Latimer, “ an American would marry an idiot 
centenarian, with children as the sands of the sea, if he 
were next heir to an earldom.” 

“ I think I have heard,” said the Meredyth cousin, 
“ of English girls ” 

“ At any rate,” Mrs. Latimer interrupted, “ an heir- 
ess must be found — and I will find her. But I am afraid 
it must he an American.” 

Everybody agreed that she was exceedingly kind. 
One or two, notably the Meredyth cousin, doubted, in 
an aside, if her help and patronage would conduce to a 
happy marriage. 

But Mrs. Fraser-Latimer knew better than to hear 
an aside. 


/ 


CHAPTER II. 

Henry Meredyth, when he came out of court, 
called a hansom, and had an imperceptible momenta 
hesitation as to where he should tell the driver to 

go- 

Meredyth was a tall, fair, handsome man, with pale 
blue eyes and rather a weak chin. He wore his hair 
divided in the middle, and carefully disposed to hide 
a slight increasing baldness, which caused him acute 
concern. Upon his appearance and his clothes he be- 
stowed much consideration, finding a distinct pleasure 
in being known as the most invariably suitably dressed 
man in town. Even upon the present occasion, which 
had not afforded much opportunity for delicacies and 
shades in attire, there was something in the arrange- 
ment of his tie and the absence of his usual buttonhole 
which proved that he had not failed to give the matter 
due consideration. 

When he found himself alone in the hansom, he 
was careful not to relax the manner of indifference and 
abstraction with which he had faced the court. 

He lounged back in his seat, stroking his duly waxed 
mustache thoughtfully; a little later it occurred to him 
5 


(5 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


to roll and light a cigarette, and he had time to smoke 
it half through before the hansom stopped at his own 
door. 

There was no reason or temptation to hurry. Mere- 
dyth went slowly up the steps, and waited for a moment 
before he threw away his cigarette, and felt instinctively 
but uselessly for his latchkey. 

He had not been at home since the crash. 

He resentfully imagined a certain curiosity in the 
face of the footman who opened the door, and gave him 
a curt nod with a determined want of expression of any 
kind in his face. Oddly the sense of being observed 
weighed upon him more than it had done when he had 
fronted the sea of faces in the court-house; to escape, 
he turned into the breakfast-room as the nearest door, 
and told the man sharply to take a whisky and soda to 
the smoking-room. 

A moment later the desolate feeling of a room that 
has been unused for some time struck upon him. It 
was very cold, and there was no fire; the blinds were 
down, and he went over and drew them up hastily. 
He found himself facing a great blank space on the 
wall with a faint sense of surprise, till he remembered 
that a large painting of Evelyn had hung there. She 
had sat for it to Millais soon after their marriage, and 
later had been immensely gratified to have her por- 
trait hung on the line at the Academy. 

Meredyth found himself resenting the officiousness 
of its removal. 

The room was unbearable with that blank wall 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 7 

staring at him, and the absence of all the little touches 
which Evelyn had understood so well. 

He went to the smoking-room, where a newly born 
fire was sending up cold little jets of flame and smoke. 
He mixed himself an unusually stiff tumbler of whisky 
and soda, and threw himself into a chair. 

It was all so uncomfortable and disagreeable, and 
it was an unreasonable dispensation of Providence to 
send him discomfort and unpleasantness. Meredyth 
had been accustomed to put aside all disagreeable things 
for nearly forty years, and he felt himself ill-used. 

He had got along very comfortably, had never gone 
out of his way to do harm to any one, and had, in fact, 
many times done much kindness. 

It was curious that he became all at once aware that 
he missed his wife — the woman who had been his wife 
till an hour ago — his wife who had been so little to him. 
He would have liked to have her with him now, and to 
say some politely, bitterly crushing thing to her. 

How little they had known of each other in the 
eighteen years of their marriage! How little, Meredyth 
thought, she had ever tried to understand him or make 
him happy! 

It occurred to him to wonder vaguely about the chil- 
dren. They had been so little in evidence, so entirely 
apart from his life, that he had really scarcely thought 
about the matter as it affected them before. Meredyth 
was accustomed, quite simply and unconsciously, to 
consider everything as it affected himself. 

But they formed an undoubted complication, and 


8 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

gave rise to all kinds of unpleasant misgivings. True 
to his principle of never allowing himself to worry, he 
got up and hunted out something to read. He did not 
very often take up a hook; like most thoroughly idle 
men, he considered that he had no time. 

It was popularly supposed that if he knew how to 
read, it was about as much as he did know; but, like 
many popular beliefs, this was a very great mistake. 

A little later he went up to get ready for dinner, 
and dressed himself, to the camellia in his buttonhole, 
with as much characteristic care as if he had not ex- 
pected to spend the evening alone. 

On his way to the dining-room he met with a sur- 
prise. He found himself face to face with a girl — a girl 
also dressed for the evening, who stood and returned 
his look, out of light blue eyes like his own, only with 
a life in them which his own lacked. She had pretty, 
soft, fair hair, just the colour of his, and a latent ob- 
stinacy about her lips which was also one of his char- 
acteristics. 

She stood opposite him with a flushed face, and a 
certain defiance in her whole manner. 

“ Vivien! ” Meredyth said in surprise. 

He had last seen this daughter of his a few months 
ago, with her hair down her back and dresses to her 
ankles, and to find himself faced by a young woman 
gave him a shock. 

“How do you do?” said Vivien politely. “I 
thought it would be better for me to come down to 
dinner.” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 9 

Meredyth was incapable of protesting, bnt he found 
himself filled with consternation. He had considered 
himself to have only children to deal with. How old 
was Vivien? 

When she had taken the head of the table in the 
most matter-of-course way in the world, and he was 
seated opposite to her, he studied her with a curious 
new interest. He felt a certain necessity for making 
conversation upon him. He was not aware that he 
and his eldest daughter had ever been alone together 
before, and certainly their conversation had always 
been limited to an exchange of greeting or a hope 
on his part that she was getting on well with her les- 
sons. 

How he could think of nothing to say to this 
stranger. 

“ Where is Miss Mordaunt? ” he said at last. 

“ She left last week,” said Vivien shortly. 

“ Left last week! ” said Meredyth, with a little 
hurry in his deliberate voice. “ How do you mean she 
left? I heard nothing about it.” 

“ You didn't engage her,” said Vivien; “ and, at any 
rate, I know she wrote to you in Norway. But we very 
seldom knew your address.” 

Meredyth moved uncomfortably on his chair, and 
helped himself to fish. 

“ And do you mean to say there is nobody to 
look after you all?” he said. “ You’ll have to go 
to school — you and Milly — that will be the best 
thing.” 


10 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

Vivien coloured hotly. 

“ No, indeed,” she said; “ yon don’t understand, fa- 
ther. I am not a child.” 

Meredyth was silenced. His lines had never lain 
among very young girls, and he entirely failed to under- 
stand any exaggeration in his daughter’s manner. She 
appeared to know all about it, and certainly he did not 
understand. But he was entirely dismayed, and began 
to puzzle over Vivien’s age again. 

“ How old are you? ” he asked her at last. 

“ I shall be eighteen before very long,’’ said Vivien; 
“ you can’t send me to school. Why, I know two girls 
who were married at eighteen! ” 

Meredyth studied her curiously. He was half in- 
clined to ask her what she proposed that he should do 
with her if he did not send her to school. It was ridicu- 
lous, impossible, outrageous that he should be burdened 
with a daughter like this. His day was not over; he 
was a young man still, and if he had any ideas for the 
future at all they were connected with bachelor life at 
one of his clubs. 

At the same time he was conscious of a curious in- 
terest in Vivien, more perhaps as a girl than as his own 
child. 

What was she thinking and feeling? How much did 
she know or understand of what had happened to-day? 
He became seized with a fear that she would ask him 
for her mother. 

What did she know? She must guess something; 
she must have some ideas of her own. She could not 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. H 

be content to lose her mother out of her life without 
inquiry or curiosity. 

If she asked questions, what was he to say? 

In his fear of it he plunged into talk about Norway. 

Vivien pretended to no interest. He became more 
and more conscious of the half-veiled hostility in her 
manner. She was a pretty girl, or rather she would be 
pretty when she got rid of certain youthful angularities. 
She had a very healthy appetite, and she was very 
much alive; every word and movement were full of 
energy, and reminded him of her mother. 

He had considered Vivien as “ one of the children,” 
but now he began to realize uncomfortably that she had 
a very decided individuality of her own. 

Misgivings about the others came to him. How old 
was Johnny? Must he expect a development equally 
astounding from him? 

Meredyth felt himself a most unjustly hampered 
man, and pitied himself profoundly. 


CHAPTEE III. 


“Meredyth vs. Meredyth and Arkwright-Gage.” 

Meredyth had taken up the paper without think- 
ing, as a kind of protection from the unfriendly eyes 
of his young daughter. 

He had got half way through his breakfast, and 
made a few remarks which had received little response. 

How when he opened the paper his own name 
seemed to spring to his eyes. He crumpled it up im- 
patiently. Could he not even have his breakfast in 
peace? 

But he could not put Vivien out of sight. 

He became aware that she was rather smartly dressed 
— somewhat too smartly for the hour and the occasion. 
It occurred to him as a distinctly unpleasant fact that 
he had not the least idea where the money to pay for 
dresses or anything else was to come from. 

Vivien had obviously not wasted her space of free- 
dom. 

There was a pile of letters waiting for him in the 
smoking-room. Meredyth did not appreciate letters, 
and had not had them sent after him, nor had he been 
in any haste to open them the night before. 

How, to drive certain unpleasant feelings about 
12 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


Vivien out of his head, he began to turn them over as 
he smoked. 

He had a great idea of making himself comfortable. 
He drew a long, lounging chair up to the fire, and 
lighted his pipe and put up his feet before he began 
to look leisurely through his letters. 

He had half expected to see his wife’s handwriting, 
and gave a sigh of relief when he found that he was 
mistaken. There were a few invitations — a very few — 
among the earliest letters; therq were notes from the 
people who considered themselves his most intimate 
friends, including two from Mrs. Fraser-Latimer. But 
the chief part of his correspondence consisted of bills 
of all kinds, dates, and amounts. 

Obviously his circumstances were entirely public 
property. 

Meredyth had never felt the want of money — his 
marriage had been just in time to save him from that 
— and at present his chief feeling was a raffled annoy- 
ance at the impertinence of this deluge of bills. 

He got up and threw his letters aside impatiently. 
There was no good bothering over them; all the bother- 
ing in the world would not provide him with money to 
pay them. It was the injustice of Fate and not any 
fault of his own which had brought him into this diffi- 
culty, and he was very much inclined to leave it to Fate 
to get him out again. 

He had had quite enough of his own society, and 
it occurred to him to go down to the club, by way of 
finding somebody or something to distract his thoughts. 


14 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

It was a very hot morning. Meredyth leaned back 
in the hansom, and tried to find shade for himself. 

His idea was to lunch at his club, and he had vague 
thoughts of going to see Mrs. Fraser-Latimer later on. 
He was one of those men who need a woman, and he 
wanted to be pitied and sympathized with. 

If he had carried out his half-formed programme, 
his life would probably have been very different. But 
an accidental meeting, to all appearance a very unim- 
portant one, changed his plans. 

Meredyth was an intensely self-conscious man. His 
slightest action or speech was always considered with 
a view to its effect on other people. As he got out 
of the hansom at the door of the club, he looked 
round with an instinct to see if any one was noticing 
him. 

When he did so, his eyes met those of a tall, brown- 
haired woman, who was sheltered by a coloured sun- 
shade, but seemed otherwise entirely indifferent to the 
heat as she walked along with a quick, businesslike 
step. 

She was walking so quickly that if she had not seen 
Meredyth he, in his deliberation, would never have 
been able to stop her. But she did see him, and paused 
with a very pleasant smile. 

He had known Alison Carnegie all her life; the 
Meredyths and Carnegies had married and intermarried 
for many generations, and she was, in fact, a kind of 
cousin of his. 

There had been at one time a youthful engagement 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 15 

between them, which had been very properly quashed 
by the authorities in both families. 

Meredyth had always kept up a kindly feeling for 
her, though for many years they had seen very little 
of each other. 

Meredyth, who hunted twice a week, went immense- 
ly into society, and spent all his odd time at his club, 
had not a moment left to cultivate any one whose way 
was not his, and Alison Carnegie, in her exceedingly 
different line, was a very busy woman. 

But just now there was nobody he would have wel- 
comed more gladly, and he greeted her with his most 
charming manner — Meredyth could be very charming 
when he chose. 

“ Alison/’ he said, “ I am very glad to see you. 
Where are you going to ? ” 

“ To lunch. I am glad we have met, Henry; I was 
going to write to you.” 

“ Come and have lunch with me. Please do.” 

Miss Carnegie shook her head. 

“I should hardly have time. My lunch is a very 
brief affair.” 

“ I’ll take you to St. James’s,” said Meredyth, 
“ and you needn’t stay a moment longer than you 
like.” 

He stood in front of her with languid obstinacy, 
stroking his mustache and waiting. Having made up 
his mind that he wished to talk to Alison, he was not 
to be easily set aside. 

When he got his way, and found himself opposite 


16 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

her at luncheon, he was satisfied, and leaned hack in 
his chair with much contentment. Alison Carnegie was 
a restful sort of person to be with; people less impressi- 
ble than Meredyth had found that out. 

She was not an absolutely handsome woman, but 
she had been much admired nevertheless, and though 
she was many years over thirty now, and it pleased 
her to talk of herself as no longer young, it seldom 
occurred to any one else so to think of her. She had 
struck out a line of her own in life, and to all appear- 
ance found it a satisfying one. 

“ Busy as ever? ” said Meredyth.' His instinctive in- 
clination to make himself agreeable always made him 
anxious not to neglect the fads of other people. 

But Alison Carnegie did not care to talk to him of 
her interests. 

She turned his question off slightly, and there was a 
sort of pause between them. Both of them knew that 
Meredyth wanted to talk of his troubles, and that he 
was impatient for sympathy. On the whole, he was 
glad of their chance meeting, and felt that Alison would 
be a safer and more satisfactory confidante than Mrs. 
Fraser-Latimer. But he had an unexpected difficulty 
in opening the subject, and he did it at last with ex- 
aggerated carelessness. 

“ Aren’t you going to condole with me — or congratu- 
late me?” he said. 

Alison let his remark pass. She did not consider 
that it needed an answer, and she was satisfied now that 
he had been the first to speak. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 17 

“I wanted to ask you,” she said, “can I help you 
with the children?” 

Meredyth sighed. What a dependable kind of per- 
son Alison was, and how he would have liked to shift 
the responsibility of the children to her shoulders! He 
did not think this definitely, hut it was what the sigh 
meant. 

“ Children, indeed! ” he said; “ let me tell you about 
Vivien. I come home to find her in long dresses, mis- 
tress of the house, and, I’ve no doubt, with her head 
full of balls and Ascot and Henley. Heartless little 
wretch! ” 

“ Poor child! ” Alison said. 

“ Poor child, indeed! I don’t think she needs 
much pity. Most girls, I should think, if they had 
lost — any kind of a mother — would have felt it, and 

have asked at least — or But I believe Vivien 

is rather pleased than otherwise at getting a chance 
of wearing long dresses and sitting at the head of 
the table. She never said a word or asked a ques- 
tion.” 

Alison looked at him. 

“ If I believed that, Henry,” she said, “ I should 
think there was still more reason to say ‘Poor child!’ 
But do you, after all these years, venture to set your- 
self up as capable of understanding a woman — above all, 
a child- woman? ” 

“ Well,” said Meredyth, “ it comes to this: Will you 
help me? ” 

“ Of course,” said Alison, “ if I can. Vivien is the 


18 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


difficulty, I can see, poor little soul! Milly is so young, 
and the boys ” 

“ There are none of them too young to starve,” said 
Meredyth with a laugh. 

“I didn’t like to speak about that till you said 
something,” said Alison. She was absently crumbling 
her bread, and bestowing more attention upon what she 
was saying than upon her luncheon. She knew that 
it was not difficult to offend Meredyth, and that she 
might easily do more harm than good. 

“Jack will surely do something for Johnny,” she 
said, “ and — and, Evelyn, it will he quite right for her 
to help with the children ” 

Meredyth coloured hotly. 

“ And perhaps somebody charitable can be found 
to support me,” he said bitterly. “No, I would rather 
send the children to the workhouse than beg like that, 
and go and drown myself — best thing I can do! ” 

His manner and feelings were so entirely removed 
from the despairing words of his speech that Alison 
found herself smiling in spite of all she could do, and 
the fact that she felt by no means gay. 

“ What I was coming to,” she said, “ was, have you 
any plans? Have you any ideas about getting some- 
thing to do?” 

“Do? What can I do?” said Meredyth. He cer- 
tainly looked particularly devoid of energy as he lounged 
on his chair, bestowing the best part of his attention 
on his clothes and hair. 

“ The horses are all gone,” he said, “ and I suppose 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 19 

the next thing is to get rid of the house, and take a 
family room in one of your beloved slums. I dare say 
you can recommend one.” , 

Miss Carnegie answered him a little sharply: 

“ Don’t be so affected, Henry,” she said. 

“ It is all very well to say that, but I don’t see any- 
thing else before us, sooner or later. What can I do 
at my age and without any training? Handicapped, 
besides, with four children. I am capable either of 
driving a cab or of giving my name as a director of 
companies. But of nothing else.” 

Alison knew very well that there was no use in 
showing impatience. 

“ Well,” she said, “ I would rather drive a cab than 
sit down with my hands crossed.” 

Something in her tone prevented him from saying 
what he was inclined to say, that he was of a different 
opinion. A wish not to appear entirely ill in her eyes 
roused him into a greater energy of speech. 

“ But what can I do ? ” he said. “ Even if I do get 
a cab to drive, I don’t suppose I shall make more than 
a couple of pounds a week, and five of us can’t live on 
that! Why, my club subscriptions, my clothes ” 

Miss Carnegie interrupted him. 

“ Henry,” she said, “ I have never thought you a 
fool. Please don’t do yourself the injustice of talking 
like that. Think it over. I must go now, as I shall 
be late as it is for an appointment at the office. Think 
it over, and come and talk to me about that and the 
children on Sunday afternoon, will you? ” 


20 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

She did not put into words her idea that she might 
be able to help him, or. rather to pnt him into the way 
of helping himself. She had a fancy that he would not 
like the thought of help from a woman. 

When he had her into a hansom, Meredyth did not 
go to see Mrs. Fraser-Latimer. 

He was conscious of an unusual and uncomfortable 
sense of responsibility and uneasiness. With the influ- 
ence of Alison Carnegie upon him, he had an idea that 
he must do something — make some effort. 

He went home and made his bills into a neat bun- 
dle, and filed them, after which he felt better. He also 
wrote a letter to his lawyers, with a view to discovering 
his position and exactly how much he would have to 
live upon. 

As the result of all these exertions, he found him- 
self somewhat exhausted, and decided not to face an- 
other evening tete-a-tete with Vivien, but to dine at the 
club. 

In the meantime he wandered about the house 
in search of amusement, and finally made his way 
to the library, and began to turn over book after book 
idly. 

He scarcely noticed little Jocelyn, his youngest boy, 
who was sitting in the dusk, curled up in a big chair by 
the window. 

Jocelyn was a pale, plain child of eight or nine. 
He had something wrong with his heart, and was never 
allowed to exert himself or to run and play with the 
others. Meredyth, who was always good-natured, had 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 21 

consequently taken more notice of him than of the 
rest, but just then he did not feel inclined to talk to 
anybody. 

He stood there, taking down first one book and then 
another, scarcely thinking what he was doing. 

He had almost forgotten the child’s existence, and 
was half startled by a very long and heartfelt sigh be- 
hind him. 

He turned round, not abruptly — Meredyth never did 
anything abruptly — but with less deliberation than 
usual. 

“ Hullo, Jossy!” he said. “ What’s the matter?” 

Jossy raised a very friendly little face. 

“ It’s only that I’m bored,” he said with a half drawl 
which Meredyth recognised as an unintentional carica- 
ture of his own manner. “ It’s very dull for us, isn’t 
it?” Jossy ended confidentially. 

“By Jove, it is!” said Meredyth, with an echo of 
his little son’s sigh. 

He sat down, and Jossy sat opposite to him, cross- 
ing his thin, little legs, and even stroking his soft lips 
w r ith a comical similarity to his father’s attitude. 

“ Are you very dull, too ? ” he said. “ There’s no- 
thing to do, and not even anybody to take us out for a 
’ walk.” 

“Poor little chap!” said Meredyth. “Where are 
the others? Haven’t you got Milly to play with?” 

“ Milly is always with the maids. She likes to hear 
them talking, and sometimes they will play with her; 
hut it’s only running-about games, so I can’t. I am 


22 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

not very fond of being with women; I like George 
better.” 

“Who is. George?” said Meredyth. 

Jossy looked at him reproachfully. 

“Not to know George,” he said, “when he opens 
the door to you every day! He is a most interesting 
man. I am sure you would like to hear him talk about 
America.” 

But in spite of George’s charms, upon which he pro- 
ceeded eagerly to dilate, it was obvious that Jossy found 
life rather a weary business just then. 

Here was a child who undoubtedly missed his 
mother. Jossy had always been a very gay little fellow 
— gay even through his frequent illnesses — and this de- 
pression was quite new to him. 

But he was very dull. Mrs. Meredyth had been a 
foolish mother, but she had loved all her children pas- 
sionately, and most of all Jossy. He had been accus- 
tomed to be spoiled and considered and amused, and had 
grown into a certain imperiousness of manner which 
had made him unpopular with the other children and 
with the servants. 

And all at once, in a day, in an hour, he had sunk 
from the position of the most important person in the 
house to that of a small, rather neglected being, de- 
pendent for careless kindness on the servants. It was 
all so puzzling; Jossy had only the vaguest of fancies 
about this sudden change in his life, but he accepted 
it with a child’s resignation and sense of the inevi- 
table. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 23 

Meredyth studied him with an uneasy sense of self- 
reproach. 

“ Wouldn’t you like story-books to read, or — some- 
thing? ” he volunteered vaguely. “ What do you gen- 
erally do in the afternoon? Not sit here doing noth- 
ing? ” 

“ It makes my head ache to read all day,” said Jossy. 
“ I used to play draughts every afternoon, hut there’s 
nobody to play with now. I got Milly to play once or 
twice, but she hates it.” 

“ Let’s have a game, then,” said Meredyth carelessly. 

Jossy’s face lighted up at once. 

“ Really? ” he said. 0 father, would you like 
it? And can you play chess? I was learning, and I 
know almost all the moves.” 

“ All right. Off with you and get the board,” said 
Meredyth. He was slightly amused at himself, and 
Jossy’s radiant joy pleased and flattered him. 

“ You are sure” the little hoy said anxiously, “ that 
you like to play? It is not only to please me? ” 

Meredyth had just suffered two ignominious defeats 
when Vivien came in hastily. 

He was pleased with himself, and consequently with 
all the world; he looked up and spoke to her in his 
most pleasant tone. 

“ Viva, come and help me,” he said. “ I am quite 
incapable of coping with such an accomplished player 
as Jossy.” 

Vivien did not look at him or answer him at all; 
she spoke to Jossy instead in a sharp tone. 


24: THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

“What are you doing, child? ” she said. “You 
mustn’t bother your father like this. Come up to the 
school-room, and I will find you something to read.” 

Jossy protested shrilly. 

“ I am not bothering father. — Am I, father? — And I 
don’t want- to go upstairs and read.” 

Meredyth, too, made a faint protest, hut Vivien was 
more than capable of controlling them both. 

She swept off her little brother in an unreasonably 
indignant fashion, pausing at the door to give her father 
a look which made him feel absolutely uncomfortable. 

When he found himself so suddenly alone before 
the deserted draught-hoard, he laughed a little. 

“By Jove, what an extraordinary girl! She posi- 
tively hates me,” he said to himself. 

Then he went off to the club with a clear conscience. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Alison - Caknegie was having a pause for rest. She 
had just finished a belated article which had run into 
her Sunday afternoon, her head was aching unwontedly, 
and she was glad to find herself a comfortable armchair, 
with many cushions. Alison rested as thoroughly as she 
did everything else, and it was this capability that 
made her able to get through so much work. 

Her room was one of half a dozen she had reserved 
for herself in connection with the home for women off 
the streets, which she had established, and which was 
now in full working order under two matrons. 

Alison had her own hull door, her own stairway, 
and her rooms entirely separate. 

There was a swing door through which she could 
visit her women or have them to visit her when she 
chose. 

Her writing and literary work was got through as 
far as was possible in the morning, but she had no sepa- 
rate room for this. A very ordinary writing-table in 
the window was all she needed, and she was not a woman 
to whom it was any trouble to keep this in good order. 

It came naturally to .Alison to have a place for 
everything and everything in its place. 

25 


26 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

She had bestowed a good deal of thought upon her 
room, and chosen everything in it carefully herself. A 
good many people would have considered it strangely 
empty. Alison liked space, and she disliked odds and 
ends and knickknacks of all kinds. She often said that 
if she had been sufficiently bold to follow her own taste 
entirely she would have had simply three chairs, a table, 
a writing-desk, and a piano. 

She had a few flowers, hut not very many. She did 
not care to leave their arrangement to a servant, and 
she had no time to attend to many herself and to keep 
them always fresh. Dead or dying flowers she could 
not hear. 

She lay hack in her chair and closed her eyes, trying 
for the time to shut out thought and rest absolutely. 
She was a very young-looking woman; but for a few 
lines about her mouth and eyes, she sometimes looked 
quite like a young girl. She had a strong face, with 
purposeful brown eyes, and a manner which erred every 
year less on the side of being a trifle too determined and 
dictatorial. 

Alison was quite aware that a desire to manage 
people entirely for their own good was a failing, of 
hers. It had got her into trouble many a time and 
oft, but of late years it had never got, beyond a de- 
sire. As a girl her face had only been strong; of 
late an increasing sweetness of expression had come 
into it. 

She could not control her thoughts to-day quite so 
well as usual. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 27 


She was wondering if Henry Meredyth wonld come 
to see her. 

It was doubtful, she thought. He had been worried 
and troubled when she had seen him last, and it had 
touched her that he had turned to her then. She did 
not know how accidental his confidence had been. But 
during the last day or two she had heard that he had 
taken up his way of living much as before, had gone 
to his clubs, to his usual entertainments, and had hung 
about Mrs. Fraser-Latimer and women of like calibre. 

What a disappointment his life had been! He had 
been such a clever boy, and so full of dreams and plans! 
Alison had heard them all during the two years of their 
impossible, blissful engagement. 

She did not realize even now how much her influ- 
ence had had to do with all his ideas — how much the 
stronger of the two she had been. 

And yet she knew Meredyth very well; she had 
faced disappointment in him after disappointment, all 
following that first disappointment, when he had shown 
his weakness of purpose by giving her up, yielding to 
pressure, without at first ceasing to care for her. 

Meredyth had not known his own mind; he had 
veered about from point to point, and what Alison had 
felt and borne nobody knew. 

She had had to stand aside and show nothing, real- 
izing, young as she was, that with her he was throwing 
aside his chance of making something of his life. 

There had never been any unkindly feeling be- 
tween them. Alison had visited Evelyn Meredyth; she 


28 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


had seen the husband and wife drifting apart, and had 
seen just enough to realize that more than half the fault 
was his. 

Evelyn was an excitable, passionate woman, and she 
had been at first very much in love with her husband, 
while he had always been careless and neglectful. 

They had had the worst effect upon each other, 
and every year Meredyth’s life had grown more pur- 
poseless, more entirely given up to making the time 
pass. 

Lord Meredyth, Henry’s elder brother, who was as 
busy in his own way as Alison was in hers, looked upon 
him with a sort of contemptuous wonder, and rejoiced 
that Johnny, to whom the title and property would 
probably go, showed symptoms of a disposition more 
energetic than his father’s. 

Only Alison still hoped better things for the man 
who had once been her lover, with a great, tolerant 
pity, which had extended itself to all men and women. 
It was her patience with Meredyth that had taught 
her to have patience through all that was tiresome and 
disappointing in her work — patience when men, over 
whom she had expended endless trouble, disappoint- 
ingly relapsed, and girls, who had implored her to find 
them escape from their poverty, declined at the last 
moment the situations she had secured for them; when 
whole families would not and could not be roused to 
make the smallest effort to better themselves; when 
promises were made and broken a hundred times over, 
and she was inclined to say that it was hopeless to try 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 29 

and help people who could never be depended upon to 
know their own minds. 

Her roughly taught lesson of patience helped her 
through all this, and taught her to see from the point 
of view of the people she was trying to help. 

She had never quite lost hope for Meredyth. 

If this trouble that had come upon him failed to 
rouse him, then indeed nothing would. 

About five o’clock he came in. Alison had had a 
solitary tea brought to her, with a few extra cups for 
emergencies, and she looked very comfortable and 
restful. 

Meredyth met her eyes with a sense of satisfaction, 
and was glad he had come. 

" I have come to be kindly treated,” he said, “ and, 
upon my word, I deserve it, for it is an absolute jour- 
ney to get over here to the back of nowhere.” 

" It is within a quarter of an hour of the Strand,” 
said Alison, "and is very convenient, even if no self- 
respecting person ought to live here. And we make 
excellent tea. Will you have some?” 

Meredyth had come in with a whiff of scent about 
him, which extinguished the faint, dainty breath from 
a bowl of primroses in the window. He had a pink 
camellia in his buttonhole, and a pale pink tie. 

" Of course I will have tea,” he said. " Alice, I am 
at my wits’ end. The servants are all disorganized; 
they have nothing to do, and consequently spend their 
time quarrelling. I am not domesticated. I never was 

made for a family man, and I am perfectly helpless.” 

3 


30 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

Meredyth’s languid voice had gained a note of de- 
pression, and Alison wondered if he had begun to feel 
the pinch of money. 

“ But you surely don’t intend to keep all those 
servants?” she said. 

“ No, I suppose not,” he assented, helping himself 
to cake. “ I suppose I must dismiss some of them some 
day or other, hut I don’t know which, I am sure.” 

“ Have you done anything about getting rid of the 
lease of your house?” 

“ Not yet,” said Meredyth; “ I suppose I shall have 

to.” 

Alison had a moment of silence. 

“ But, Henry,” she said, “ that is the first thing — 
the very first thing to do.” 

“ I must see about it one of these days,” said Mere- 
dyth. “ The fact is, I haven’t had a moment.” 

This manner of looking at things it was that drove 
Lord Meredyth beyond his patience at once, and made 
it quite impossible for the two brothers to find anything 
in common. 

Henry Meredyth did not want to he told what he 
ought to do; he wanted to be soothed, petted, and sym- 
pathized with. 

“ What about the children? ” said Alison. 

He brightened a little. 

“ Jossy is a dear little chap,” he said. “ Johnny 
came home yesterday for his holidays, and seems to be 
a very ordinary, rough sort of schoolboy. But do you 
know one extraordinary thing? That boy never asked 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 31 

for his mother, and yon know how she used to adore 
him. He came in, just as if he noticed nothing differ- 
ent, as jolly as possible. And he never mentioned her 
name.” 

“ Children are strange,” Alison said; “ probably 
Johnny knows more than you think. And what about 
Viva? ” 

Meredyth laughed a little. 

“ Vivien and I don’t get on at all,” he said. “ That 
child hates me.” 

“ May I go and see her? ” Alison said. “ I could go 
to-morrow afternoon, and I am in what is for me a 
whirl of gaiety next week. I could take her to several 
places, if I may? ” 

“ Thank you,” Meredyth said; “ that’s very good of 
you, Alice, if it won’t bother you. Mrs. Fraser-Latimer 
asked me yesterday if I would let her look after her a 
bit.” 

Alison was quite conscious of a certain hesitation in 
his voice, and that he looked at her doubtfully. 

“ But, of course,” she said, “ that is out of the ques- 
tion.” 

“ Of course,” said Meredyth in an unassured voice; 
“ at least, I suppose so. But one doesn’t care to be 
rude. It was very good-natured of Mrs. Latimer.” 

It was most obvious that he was anxious to accept 
any help. 

“ I don’t see that you need be rude,” said Alison. 
“ Don’t you think you ought to be specially careful 
with Viva?” 


32 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

" Yes — of course,” said Meredyth slowly. 

There was a mutual pause. Meredyth with great 
gravity, and an air of complete engrossment in what he 
was doing, was balancing his teaspoon on his finger. In 
reality, his thoughts were a long way off. 

He broke the silence. 

“ I had a letter from Evelyn this morning,” he 
said. 

Alison was not very much surprised. She said no- 
thing, but looked a question, leaving it to him to tell her 
as much as he chose. 

“ She offers,” said he, “ to do what I think right 
for the children — in the way of money. What should 
I say? ” 

“ It is only charity to let her do something,” 
said Alison, “ if there was no other reason.” She 
would not admit to herself the merest background 
misgiving that Henry might himself grow to be 
contented to sit down and do nothing on his wife’s 
money. 

"It was such a mad, hysterical, childish letter,” 
Meredyth said, “ I don’t know how to answer it, or 
how exactly to be so brutal as to refer her to my so- 
licitors.” 

His hand went half consciously to his waistcoat 
pocket, and Alison saw that if she wished, the letter 
was hers to read. But it seemed to her that this would 
be a cruelty. 

“ I know she means what she says,” said Meredyth; 
“ but the question is whether she will be able to carry it 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


out. Arkwright-Gage has spent all his own money, and 
I don't doubt he will spend hers. I know there is trou- 
ble ahead. Arkwright-Gage is a brute. I have seen 
him beat his horse about the head in the hunting field 
till the blood came pouring. And a man who is a brute 
to a horse is a brute to a woman too. He was fined for 
cruelty to his horses; he ought to have been flogged. 
But there will be nobody to interfere between him and 
Evelyn.” 

Alison sighed. “ Poor Evelyn! She would never 
have been a happy woman.” 

“ She was desperate for admiration,” Meredyth said. 
“ At one time she got plenty of it. She saw it slipping 
away from her, and as men receded she advanced, till 
she went too far.” 

Alison looked at him in a little surprise. She did 
not know that he had gauged his wife's character so 
entirely as she had done, nor that he could speak of her 
so dispassionately. 

But it was a subject which there was no use in dis- 
cussing. Evelyn had taken her life into her own hands. 
That she would want to see the children some day, and 
so complicate Meredyth's position, both he and Alison 
were silently sure. But Meredyth did not raise that 
difficulty now; he was not in the habit of looking ahead 
for trouble. 

He leaned back his lazy length in his armchair, and 
said: “ But the question is, supposing the children are 
all right, what is to become of me? What am I to 
do?” 


34 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ The question is,” said Alison, “ whether you really 
want me to suggest anything. Are you really in earnest 
about wanting something to do?” 

Meredyth answered, drawing himself upright in his 
chair, and in a tone of prompt half offence. 

“ Of course I am in earnest. But what is it possible 
for a man to do, at my age, without any special training 
— unless I go as coachman or rough rider? ” 

“ There’s only one way in which I could be of a 
little use — in which I could help you a little,” said Ali- 
son with some hesitation. “ Do you remember,” she 
said, “ that at one time your idea was to write? ” 

She waited, colouring faintly. It was so long ago — 
such a lifetime — since she and Meredyth had tried to 
take up literature together. They had even begun a 
collaborated novel, which had never been finished. 
Somewhere, locked up in her room, Alison had the first 
six chapters of their nameless work. 

She saw that he gradually remembered too. The 
episode was to him so entirely a forgotten and put- 
aside thing that it was a moment or two before it came 
to his mind. 

She went on speaking, to cover the pause of recol- 
lection on his part. 

“ Of course, writing is a trade like any other, and 
would have to be learned. But I could get you a start ” 
— she was a little unwilling to speak of her own help — 
“ and you might like to try.” 

He shook his head. 

“ No use at all, Alison; many thanks. The time has 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 35 

gone by for that. I can’t begin now, and it’s not in my 
line.” 

“ But you would say that of anything I suggested. 
Why not try an article of, say, twelve hundred words? 
I will leave the subject to you. You might at least 
try. I know you have it in you.” 

“ It’s no good, Alison, thank you.” 

He looked hopeless. He lay back in his chair, with 
the obstinate look she knew in his face. 

An interruption came while she was making up her 
mind that it would be useless to say any more. 

A young and exceedingly high-church curate was 
ushered into the room in a great hurry. He began to 
speak before he was over the threshold, breaking into 
the peacefulness of the room, hot and even a little 
dishevelled. 

“ 0 Miss Carnegie! I’ve come about Sassoon’s arti- 
cle,” he began, and then he saw Meredyth and paused. 

“ Very well. Come in and have some tea,” said 
Alison calmly. 

“ I have less than half a minute to stay; I have, 
really. I was due at the club ten minutes ago. And I 
have a hundred things to ask you about.” 

“ Very well,” said Alison again. — “ You won’t mind 
less than half a minute’s business, Henry? ” 

The newcomer did not wait for further permission. 

“ I want to tell you Moriarty is in trouble again, 
and the police took him off yesterday. Can you go and 
see his wife to-morrow? I know you manage with the 
women, and don’t get made a fool of, as I do.” 


36 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ Wait a moment,” said Alison, interrupting his 
breathless flow of words; “ I’ll note down what you 
want.” 

She got up and went over to her writing-desk with 
a glance of apology to Meredyth. 

The curate followed her, still talking. 

“And particularly,” he said, “there’s that girl in 
Bethnal Street; I don’t know what’s to be done about 
her ” 

He lowered his voice a little, and Meredyth lost the 
end of the sentence. He had got up when Alison did, 
and now he walked over to the window, not to feel him- 
self in the way. 

But he could not help hearing what they were say- 
ing when the curate raised his voice again, this time 
having returned to his first subject. 

“ But about Sassoon’s article. He wants to know 
if you can find room for it next week, because it is not 
a subject that will keep.” 

“ I’ll try. I promised him I would try. I sup- 
pose it is quite short? I’ll write to him about it to- 
morrow, or he might come round and see me at the 
office.” 

“ I am sure he will. But we shall be awfully hard 
at it to-morrow. We’ve our first boxing competition 
in the evening, and it remains to see how it will turn 
out. There’s a certain possibility of it’s ending in a 
free fight. Good-bye.” 

“ Are you off to prepare for your musical evening? ” 
said Alison. “ I wrote to Mrs. Morse about that crip- 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 37 

pled child. Isn’t the father one of your performers to- 
night? Yon might tell him.” 

“I’ve my doubts if he’ll turn up. He’s rather a 
broken reed. Good-bye. By the way, Sassoon says he’s 
going to write a novel.” 

Alison laughed. “ I only hope he won’t expect me 
to read it! ” she said. 

“ I’ll tell him you say so. It’s to be Jewish, of 
course. He’s going to leave Zangwill nowhere. Good- 
bye.” 

This time he was successful in getting himself 
away. 

“ What frightful energy! ” said Meredyth. There 
was a certain briskness in his tone which made Alison 
look at him. 

“ Mr. O’Neil is a trifle too energetic,” she said, “ but 
he’s an excellent boy.” 

“ He seems to be very intimate here,” said Mere- 
dyth with a shade of discontent in his tone. “ Why, 
he spoke to your maid when she brought in the tea.” 

“ Oh, of course he knows her,” Alison said; “ she 
is one of my women. In fact, it was he who brought 
her to me.” 

“ One of your women? ” said Meredyth. “ You don’t 
mean to say you let that class of women into your own 
rooms? ” 

“ That girl was a servant in a lodging-house,” said 
Alison. “ One evening she happened to displease her 
mistress, and she was turned out into the street. She 
was a country girl, and had not been a month in Lon- 


38 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

don. I grant yon I should be very sorry to let her mis- 
tress into my rooms.” 

Meredyth shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. 

“ You don’t know,” Alison went on, “ all the good 
that young fellow and Abram Sassoon do in the slums.” 

“ Abram Sassoon! Heavens, what a name!” 

“He is a Jew, of course. He has much the most 
stuff in him of the two, though he is hardly fit to write 
a novel just yet. If self-confidence will carry him 
through, he’ll succeed. He considers it his mission to 
look after the Jews, and get them back to Jerusalem.” 

“What absurdity!” said Meredyth. 

“ I don’t know about that. And, at any rate, there 
are worse fads possible for a boy of twenty, with a mil- 
lion of money and nobody to control him. They are 
good boys.” 

“ Well,” said Meredyth suddenly, “ I’ll try that arti- 
cle, Alice. But you’ll have to suggest a subject. Twelve 
hundred words. How many pages does that mean? ” 

If there was a smile in Alison’s thoughts, there was 
no outward sign of it, and there was a certain sadness 
in her amusement. 

How strongly Henry was influenced by his sur- 
roundings! 

“ Bryan O’Neil will do him more good than I can,” 
she thought to herself. 


CHAPTER V. 


“ Viva, do you think Uncle Jack will take me to 
the thnatre these holidays?” 

No answer. Vivien was curled up comfortably, if 
inelegantly, on the broad school-room window seat, and 
very much engrossed in the book she was reading. 

“ Viva! I want to know if you think Uncle Jack 
will take me to the theatre these holidays? ” 

Johnny Meredyth had exhausted all his resources 
for amusement, and was sitting idly with his elbows 
sufficiently far on the table to shake Milly, who was 
painting, now and then. 

He w~as bored and he was unhappy, and he had con- 
sequently been making himself a general nuisance. He 
had quarrelled with Milly and teased Jossy till both 
entertainments palled. 

Vivien started when a little pellet of paper struck 
her sharply on the cheek. She looked up impatiently. 

“ You tiresome boy! How dare you be so rude? ” 

Johnny was obviously delighted to have roused her. ‘ 

“ If I’m rude,” he said, “ so are you. It is very rude 
not to answer a question.” 

“ 1 didn’t hear what you were talking about. The 
theatre? Oh, how do I know? ” 

39 


40 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

Vivien returned to her book. 

"There!” said Johnny; "yon see she heard per- 
fectly! ” 

Nobody answered. Milly, his faithful ally, had for 
once lost patience, and was not on speaking terms with 
him, and J ossy was disconsolately trying to play 
draughts by himself. 

There was a silence. 

J ohnny yawned, leaned hack in his chair, and began 
to kick the table. Milly was driven from her silence to 
remonstrate, which she did, firmly hut not mildly. 

Johnny, in response, gave the table an extra jerk, 
and upset her painting water all over her half -finished 
sketch. 

She hurst into a torrent of angry words, and ap- 
pealed to Vivien, who administered a sharp, short scold- 
ing all round with great impartiality. 

Johnny, who was really sorry, took great care not 
to show it, and proceeded to drum on the table and 
whistle with great diligence. 

They were not normally quarrelsome children at all. 
They were all uncomfortable and unhappy, and felt 
themselves neglected, without realizing what was wrong 
with them. 

The schoolroom maid came in just then with a 
message that Miss Carnegie was in the library, and 
wanted to see Miss Viva. 

Vivien put down her hook with a start and got up, 
her head still a little confused with what she was 
reading. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


She told herself that she did not want to see Miss 
Carnegie. She had reasons of her own which made 
her a particularly unwelcome visitor. 

She had been attracted by Mrs. Fraser-Latimer, who 
treated her as a woman, and whom she immensely ad- 
mired. 

Vivien was fiercely, aggressively grown-up just at 
present. 

Jossy began to slip off his chair; he liked Miss 
Carnegie, and wanted to go and sit on her knee and 
coax her to play with him. 

But Viva stopped him decidedly, and went down- 
stairs by herself with a frown on her face and her stiff- 
est manner. She had become intensely formal to coun- 
teract the fact of her youth. 

Alison, who had cousinly privileges, and was to a 
certain extent free of the house, had gone to the library, 
because it was the room she liked best. 

Meredyth had not forgotten his old love for books, 
though he had grown to take them superficially. He 
was always adding disconnected volumes, and in this 
Alison recognised a link between them — the books he 
chose were always what she herself would have chosen. 

She had been looking through the shelves when 
Vivien came in. When Alison found herself in the 
room with books, she always drew to them by instinct; 
but she was only giving them a divided attention just 
then. 

Alison was a born mother; she mothered her boys 
and girls in the slums; she mothered every little child 


42 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

she came across. But she had a special feeling for 
Meredyth’s children. They were “ children stolen from 
her.” 

It may have been in part this special feeling that 
helped her to understand Vivien’s attitude of aggressive 
dignity. 

Certainly the girl’s manner was not attractive. She 
was like her father, hut she had none of his charming 
air of welcome which always fascinated for the time 
even people who disliked him. Instead, Vivien had 
very much the manner of repelling an unwarrantable 
intrusion. 

“ Well, Viva,” said Alison cheerfully, “ I have come 
to ask if you will dine with me on Wednesday, and go 
to Lady Fanshawe’s At Home?” 

Vivien was very much surprised. She was prepared 
to fight a denial of her claims to womanhood — possibly 
even a suggestion of school. She stammered and hesi- 
tated over her answer, feeling herself ungracious. She 
was not going to he bribed into friendliness, she said 
to herself; whatever Alison might say or do, she was 
on her guard. It would make no difference. 

"Well, will you go?” said Alison. “I am not at 
all fond of going out by myself, and it might amuse 
you.” 

“ Thank you,” said Vivien unwillingly. She had 
never been at her best with Alison since she had grown 
from a child into a girl, hut she had never been quite 
like this. Alison knew very well that it was a vague, 
reasonless jealousy on her mother’s part which had pre- 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 43 


vented Vivien from ever getting fond of her. Viva had 
always sided with her mother in an exaggerated way. 
But her manner had never before been so entirely an- 
tagonistic. 

“ I should like to go/’ she said, “ but Mrs. Fraser- 
Latimer is going to ask me to dinner some day ” 

“Not on Wednesday, I hope?” 

Alison knew Mrs. Fraser-Latimer. She knew that 
however many pleasant things she might say, she was 
not very likely to ask a young girl like Vivien to dinner. 

“Are you going anywhere this afternoon?” Alison 
said. “Johnny is at home, isn’t he? How are you 
managing to amuse him? A boy is always hard to dis- 
pose of in town.” 

“ He was out by himself all morning,” Vivien said 
carelessly, “ and he and Milly have been quarrelling 
all afternoon.” 

“ That seems as if they were rather hard up for 
something to do,” Alison suggested. “ I wonder could 
I he of any use ? ” 

Vivien thanked her, and shook her head. She was, 
in truth, in great need of help, but she would not 
have admitted it or accepted it from Alison for the 
world. 

Miss Carnegie began to feel for Meredyth, remem- 
bering that he had told her he found it difficult to talk 
to Vivien. 

She made another attempt, remembering that girls 
of Vivien’s age always needed patience, and she only a 
little more than the rest. 


44 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

There was nobody but Alison likely to have much 
patience with Viva. 

“What do you do all day yourself?” she said. 
“ Don’t you find it dull? I suppose you read? ” 

“ Yes/’ said Vivien, “ I read a great deal.” 

“And what kind of books? I suppose you know 
all these shelves well? I wonder would you and I 
agree about what we like? ” 

“ I read novels,” said Vivien. “ I don’t often get 
books in here. I can get what I want at Mudie’s.” 

“ Of course you read novels,” said Alison; “ but I 
suppose not only novels? ” 

“ Yes,” said Vivien, “ only novels. I am reading 
A Superfluous Woman now, and before that I read 
The Story of an African Farm and The Heavenly 
Twins.” 

She hoped Alison would be shocked. She was ag- 
gressively anxious to show her emancipation. 

But if Alison was shocked she did not show it. 

She only said: “ My dear child, what a muddle your 
head must be in! I am afraid I don’t particularly ad- 
mire your choice of literature.” 

Vivien, braced for a struggle, failed to discover 
Alison’s opinion either in her looks or words. 

The conversation dragged, and was not enlivened 
till Milly and Johnny made their appearance recon- 
ciled. 

They made much of Alison, covering their sister’s 
coldness, while she sat aloof. They insisted on an after- 
noon being found when Miss Carnegie should take them 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 45 

to the Zoological Gardens, which not even Johnny 
despised. 

Alison broke into a future busy day for their sake. 
Perhaps it was as much a work of charity as anything 
she could do in the slums. 

Vivien looked on with angry coldness. When Ali- 
son left, followed clingingly to the hall door by the 
lonely children, she went upstairs to her own room and 
shut herself in. 

Her head was whirling confusedly with anger and 
misery; she realized her own unhappiness with a certain 
outside pity, and felt bitterly against the others. They 
were false and heartless and forgetful. 

Vivien lay face downward on her bed, and longed, 
making fierce, wild bargains with God, for her mother, 
till she looked up, almost expecting to see her there, 
brought somehow by the knowledge of her child’s 
want. 

Vivien had been a particularly happy girl. She 
had admiringly adored her mother, enslaving herself to 
her after the fashion in which the most selfish member 
in a family sometimes finds herself served. 

In return, Vivien had been spoiled and indulged, 
and made at times a companion; no holiday request of 
hers had ever been refused. She had never been really 
in the schoolroom. 

There had not been actual disagreements between 
her father and mother in Vivien’s memory; each had 
gone his or her own way, and she had grown up seeing, 

but in no wise judging. Occasional passionate out- 
4 


46 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

breaks of complaint from her mother had won her par- 
tisanship, hut scarcely troubled her, coming as they did 
in the ordinary course of events. 

To Vivien the time when the child’s acceptance of 
the parent becomes necessarily merged in the man or 
woman’s judgment of another man or woman had come 
in a shock — not, as to most, by degrees. 

There had been a day when she had awakened to 
the sense of some terrible thing — when a mystery, dis- 
cussed everywhere in whispers, hung over the house, 
and her mother was not there, and had left silence be- 
hind her. 

Vivien had grown to know, asking no questions, and 
the knowledge had come as ah unsolved puzzle. 

It was driven upon her for the first time that her 
mother could do wrong, and with that came a doubt of 
everything — and a doubt, eagerly seized, of what con- 
stituted right and wrong. Snatching at apologies for 
her mother, Vivien remembered the words against her 
father which had slipped over her mind before. 

The last thing which her mother had said to her was 
in an outbreak of premature jealousy at the possibility 
of influence being gained by Alison Carnegie in the 
home she was deserting. Viva cherished the unwise 
words fiercely. 

The young ones might forget or be careless; she 
would forget nothing. 

Jossy, who had been the dearest, should surely have 
felt a little of the trouble. 

She had heard him in dispute with a proposal for 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 47 

bed not three days after he had lost his mother. “ I 
have no mother now/’ he had said, almost in the 
tone of a boast, “ and so I needn’t go to bed till I 
like.” 

Since then he had either forgotten or been silenced. 

Among the others, their mother’s name had never 
been mentioned. 

Vivien had puzzled out the mystery for herself, with 
the help of odd words and scraps in the papers and 
much thought. At that time a review of a book, written 
after the fashion of much present-day literature, had 
fallen into her hands. She had read it with an open- 
ing glimpse of many things, and then she had sent for 
and read the book itself, finding much in it which un- 
aided she would not have found. 

This first had been followed by many others. Into 
the mind of an entirely ignorant girl, rudely brushed 
for the first time by a life problem, these brought in- 
creasing confusion. 

Vivien began to read at first with a view to an un- 
derstanding about her mother. She went on, gaining 
a curiously false, distorted knowledge, and finding an 
excitement in her half discoveries which shut unhappi- 
ness and dulness out. 

She even secretly helped herself on by dictionaries, 
by the Bible, by medical books which lay on the library 
shelves. There was nobody to interfere with her or to 
heed what she did. 

The consequence was an inextricable confusion of 
ignorance and knowledge filling her mind, and bringing 


48 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

a strange excitement with it. Without understanding 
herself, she was restless and miserable, bewildered by 
half revelations, showing her glimpses of the wicked- 
ness and horror of the world and none of its beauty. 

Before she was eighteen the freshness was being 
rubbed out of her girlhood. 


CHAPTER VI. 


Meredyth had shut himself into his study to wres- 
tle with his article. He considered himself sufficiently 
well supplied with ideas, and sat down, choosing himself 
a new pen with confidence. 

Was there anything fresh to he said about Norway 
or fishing there? Something — something cynical and 
sparkling upon the literature of the period commended 
itself to him more. Or a social matter, dealing with 
club life? 

Meredyth bit his pen and pondered. He wanted a 
striking beginning — something to take a reader’s inter- 
est at once. When the first sentence was written the 
rest would come easily. 

What subject should he choose? An idea, half 
formed, of a racing or coaching story — something to do 
with the horses he loved — flooded everything else out 
of his head till he began to try and put his thoughts 
to paper. 

The first sentence, the opening one, would not get 
itself written. 

He had rarely written a line, save the barest busi- 
ness communication, for eighteen years, and he had 
49 


50 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

no habit to help him in the concentration of his 
thoughts. They floated from one subject to another, 
confusing him utterly. 

An idea from his visit to Norway got into the mid- 
dle of a half -finished sentence upon literature, and was 
in its turn driven out by the memory of a winter day’s 
run. 

He drew a pile of Spectators to him, and cribbed 
shamelessly from two or three articles to compose a 
first sentence for himself. Then he wrote on obsti- 
nately, finding his ideas gone. 

At the end of his first page he read over what he 
had written, and felt himself disgusted. There was 
nothing of his meaning in the words he had found; 
adjectives heaped upon each other, “ ands ” and “ ors ” 
tripped each other up. He tore the paper deliberately 
across and across. 

He tried once again, his vanity standing his friend, 
and making him unwilling to confess himself beaten 
in what had seemed so easy. 

But the hopefulness and confidence of his first be- 
ginning had gone, and sentences would not form them- 
selves. 

_ He threw down his pen in despair, and went off 
to Mrs. Fraser-Latimer to get reinstated in his own 
opinion. 

He remembered that Alison was going out to din- 
ner, and sent her a bouquet, with a note saying that 
he must stick to his own way of going, though he 
thanked her. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 51 

And so he probably would have done had there 
been no money pressure upon him. But hills contin- 
ued to pour in, accompanied sometimes by unpleasant 
incidents, and as yet nothing was arranged about the 
lease of the house or Evelyn’s settlement upon the chil- 
dren. 

A shortness in ready money began to make itself 
most unpleasantly felt. 

Meredyth held faint hopes of retrieving himself till 
the Derby and Ascot were over. He won and lost alter- 
nately, and came out in the end a few paltry pounds 
to the good. 

Vivien went to Ascot in Mrs. Fraser-Latimer’s 
charge, and against her father’s wishes and conscience. 

Nobody considered it his or her business to remon- 
strate, though his sister-in-law. Lady Meredyth, did say 
a word of surprise, and would have said more had she 
not been conscious that an invitation from herself might 
well have been forthcoming. 

Henry Meredyth never cared to say no, especially 
to Mrs. Fraser-Latimer. He shrugged his shoulders, and 
supposed it wouldn’t matter. 

It was Vivien’s first social experience, proving an 
infinitely bad beginning. She enjoyed herself fever- 
ishly, and without experience to judge the people she 
was with. 

A young guardsman named Maurice devoted himself 
to her after the free-and-easy fashion possible in such 
a party. He sat beside her on the way home on the 
coach, and found that she failed to understand when 


52 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

his foot touched hers, but was encouragingly remon- 
strant when he caught her hand and pressed it. 

Vivien, in the excitement of the past day, of the 
evening, and a first man’s admiration, was entirely be- 
yond her own control or comprehension. These last 
few months had almost swept away the landmarks of 
girl’s instinct, and left her with no firm ground and no 
guidance. 

It was an intoxicating, wonderful drive to her. 

Meredyth remarked nothing. With him Vivien was 
awkward and speechless. A harrier of silence lay be- 
tween them. 

He felt daily less uncomfortable about Mrs. Fraser- 
Latimer’s fancy for his daughter. She was very good- 
natured, and, after all, there were many worse women, 
he told himself, shifting aside responsibility. 

Meantime he continued to let his own affairs slide 
much as he let Viva’s. 

It was actually through Mrs. Fraser-Latimer that 
he first grew to realize his position thoroughly. 

One day he happened to have the misfortune to he 
discovered by her in Bond Street. He knew it was a 
misfortune from the moment he saw himself beckoned 
to her carriage, because he knew Mrs. Fraser-Latimer. 

She had a convenient niece with her — she never 
went about alone — and he realized that he would he ex- 
pected to take both to tea at the club, and would have 
been glad to escape so lightly. 

But this was not Mrs. Fraser-Latimer’s way. She 
got out of her carriage and announced her intention of 


THE FEEEDOM OF HENEY MEEEDYTH. 53 


shopping, and Meredyth knew what that meant and who 
would pay. 

According to his duty and his habit, he professed 
himself delighted, measuring his pace to suit hers, and 
steering her through the passers-by. 

He knew what was expected of him when she came 
to a halt before a jeweller’s window and fell to admira- 
tion of a diamond safety-pin brooch, just needed, she 
said, to complete the lace at her throat. 

Meredyth took the hint, and had known broader 
ones. 

He had a personal liking for jewelry. He never 
wore more than an elaborate scarf-pin, with the plain- 
est of studs and sleeve links; but he had scarf-pins at 
home which would almost have given him a change for 
every day of the year, and odds and ends of jewelry 
littered his table. 

The people in the shop knew him well, and came 
at once to serve him, bringing trays of safety pins, 
through which Mrs. Fraser-Latimer still stuck to her 
first choice. 

“ It’s all right,” Meredyth said to the man. — •“ Let 
me fasten it in for you, Mrs. Fraser-Latimer.” 

But when he put out his hand for the brooch the 
shopman held back. 

“ We can send it for you, sir,” he said, “ with pleas- 
ure.” 

“No, thank you,” said Meredyth in his slowest 
voice. 

“ But — I believe there will be something required — 


54 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

the pin to be strengthened — if I might send the brooch 
later? ” 

Meredyth saw the surprise in Mrs. Fraser-Latimer’s 
eyes, and spoke sharply. The man still failed to yield, 
and made a polite excuse for speaking to his principal, 
who drew Henry aside. 

“ Perhaps,” he said, “ you would care to pay for 
this?” 

“ You can put it down to my account,” said Mere- 
dyth, colouring. “ You know who I am.” 

The jeweller did not say that in this knowledge 
lay the reason of his hesitation, but he looked it. 

“ I am very sorry, sir, very sorry indeed to dis- 
oblige you; but I believe our bill is rather a heavy one, 
and we have sent it in twice. I regret exceedingly that 
it is our rule.” 

Meredyth also regretted it exceedingly. The awk- 
wardness of his position was felt by him with especial 
acuteness, and could not be carried off with a laugh. 

The idea of what Mrs. Fraser-Latimer must think 
and w r ould say crimsoned his face, and showed him to 
her absolutely nervous for the first time. 

It did more. It lost her the last remains of his 
careless allegiance; it made an end of his pleasure in 
her society. 

When he got home he began to turn over in his 
mind very seriously what was to be done, and Vivien 
chose this opportune moment to come to him about 
money. 

She had put off the evil day as long as possible, not 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 55 


because the idea of any difficulty had ever occurred to 
her mind, but simply from a warped feeling of loyalty 
to her mother, which made her unwilling to ask her 
father for anything. 

But the outside unpleasantness of people calling 
importunately for their money, and of complaints 
among the disorganized servants, conquered her un- 
willingness. 

After dinner, which had passed with gaps of silence, 
she spoke to him with some difficulty. 

“ Father,” she said, reddening a little with her 
words, “ can you let me have some money? Mrs. Davis 
says she owes the servants for two months, and there 
are my dresses ” 

Meredyth finished peeling a pear deliberately, care- 
fully keeping the peel unbroken, and taking it off in 
a long serpent. 

“ I should be most happy,” he said smoothly, “ but 
I haven’t got money to give you.” 

“ Not got it! ” 

Vivien stared at him in an extremity of astonish- 
ment, with half suspicion of a joke. Money had come 
to her so entirely as a matter of course all her life! 

Her father felt his pockets, bringing out a pile of 
silver with a sprinkling of gold; he pushed the little 
heap across the table to her. 

“ I am afraid that won’t be much use to you,” he 
said, “ but it is absolutely all I have got.” 

“But what — what has happened? Where is all our 
money gone?” 


56 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

Thoughts flew through Vivien’s head. Visions of a 
smash — of the breaking of a bank — came to her first, 
and then the truth dawned upon her vaguely. The 
money had been her mother’s. Her mother’s too 
frank speech in anger had long ago taught her daughter 
this, but for the first time she began to realize it. 

Meredyth watched her curiously, wondering if he 
would be called upon to explain coarsely. He saw the 
inward look of seeking recollection, and then the flash 
of memory and gradual change of expression. Vivien’s 
first feeling was an excitement not far off joy; the 
prospect of a change — of something which was going 
to happen — came upon her mind pleasantly. 

She turned to her father again with a growing look 
of energy and determination which hid her likeness 
to him. 

“What are you going to do?” she said. 

Meredyth covered an artificial yawn, less at ease 
than he wished to look. 

“ I wish I knew,” he said. 

There was a certain dignity in Viva’s position that 
pleased her. 

She was talking to her father as a grown-up woman, 
ready to take her part as a woman. She had all a 
child’s eagerness to begin ta live and a child’s fearless- 
ness to face what was new. 

“ But, father,” she said, “ mayn’t I know? Don’t 
you think I ought to know how much we shall have 
to live on? ” 

Meredyth leaned back in his chair, and in doing 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 57 

so caught sight of himself in the looking-glass of 
the sideboard and put up his hand instinctively to 
smooth his hair with a movement which always irri- 
tated Viva. 

“ I don’t know how much we shall have to live 
upon/’ he said; “ probably a few hundreds.” 

Hundreds conveyed little idea to Vivien’s mind. 
She paused, thinking too intently to he conscious of 
her father’s scrutiny. He was watching her with some 
interest and amusement. 

It was the first evening he had dined at home for 
some weeks, and a certain sense of consequent virtue 
supported him through Viva’s questions. 

When she spoke again, he saw it was with some 
definite ideas. 

“ Father, does this house belong to us?” she said. 

He shook his head, and began to roll himself a 
cigarette — he always made his own. 

“ Then why can’t we go at once — to-morrow — and 
live in some house that will cost less?” 

“ My dear child, you don’t understand,” said Mere- 
dyth. 

Viva passed over the insult to her years, and brought 
herself to answer cheerfully. 

“ I don’t understand, hut I want to understand,” she 
said. 

“ Well, we have a lease of the house — for so many 
years.” 

She pondered over this. 

“ But can’t we sell the lease? Can’t that be done? ” 


5S THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

she said carefully. She weighed her words, afraid she 
would give her father an opening for laughter. 

“ I suppose so,” he said. 

“And get rid of the servants? Why not sell the 
lease, and dismiss all the servants except one or two, 
and go away — to-morrow?” 

Meredyth did laugh now, to her indignation. There 
were a great many things to he done first, he said, and 
explained that to act in such a hurried manner would 
be a false economy. Viva was damped, being full of a 
wish to do something at once. She insisted on an ex- 
planation as to the first step. Meredyth turned his 
cigarette about in his fingers, and finally lighted it as 
a hint for her departure, but she was too eager even 
to notice what he was doing. 

“ Is there any good in waiting? ” she said. “ Why 
not write # to the lawyers at once, or whoever has to do 
with the house?” 

“ Now?” said Meredyth, dismayed. “What is the 
good of writing now? The letter couldn’t he posted at 
this hour of the night.” 

“Why not?” said Viva. “And, at any rate, it 
might as well be written. Will you write, father? ” 

She was eager to feel something done, hut she would 
not descend to entreaties with her father. Her will 
overcame his, however; he was utterly overwhelmed by 
her energy, coming on the top of the unpleasant inci- 
dent of the afternoon. He made lessening protest, and 
felt it slighter trouble to yield. 

Vivien amused while she bothered him; she was so 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 59 

wise and yet so foolish — such a woman and yet so en- 
tirely childish. She was more successful than an older 
person might have been, in that she did not make him 
feel himself in a second place. 

As for Vivien, the idea of a change, and of the neces- 
sity for her to exert herself, did her much good, driving 
away for the time the unwholesome, terrible ideas which 
overwhelmed her mind. It seemed as if a black cloud 
had lifted from her that evening, and Viva thought it 
was gone for ever. 

She was full of wild ideas of what she would do, 
how she would work for the others, and how com- 
fortable she would make their new home. What great 
things she would do for them, she thought, classing 
her father with the children with a half-conscious con- 
tempt, which he would have found unbearable! 

There was a joy, too, in the idea of her mother watch- 
ing over them as a providence, ready, as Viva felt con- 
fident she would be, to help them if it was ever neces- 
sary. With this thought she did not feel so utterly 
lost. 

Viva had dreams, visions, of her meeting again with 
her mother, and in some illogical way this money loss 
seemed to make her dreams clearer. 

She had caught no clear conception of Major Ark- 
wright-Gage in his new position to her mother. The 
coarsening and unhealthiness in her mind had not 
as yet reached her mother. She knew without real- 
izing. 

When she had left him, Meredyth stretched himself 


60 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

out and smoked exhaustedly. But he was not unin- 
fluenced, and pondered over occupations to be sought 
for. 

His reason told him that that way lay almost in- 
surmountable difficulties, but his good opinion of him- 
self, shaken but not destroyed, warred with his reason. 


CHAPTER VII. 


“Father, is it true? Is it true what this letter 
says? ” 

Vivien’s eyes were full of excitement and anger. 
She flung down a crumpled letter before her father, 
then half moved to snatch it away again from the pol- 
lution of his touch. 

Meredyth never allowed himself to grow excited. 
He drew the letter toward him quietly after a pause 
to see if Viva’s movement of withdrawal meant any- 
thing, and he read deliberately, without outward sign 
of disturbance. 

Vivien waited, quivering with impatience. She 
broke in again before he had finished, asking hotly if it 
was true. 

Meredyth raised his light eyes slowly to her face. 

“Well?” he said. 

Vivien stamped on the floor without knowing what 
she was doing. 

“ You want to know if what is said in this very ill- 
judged and excited epistle is true? Certainly it is true 
that I have had a letter threatening the withdrawal of 
a promised settlement upon you children unless I con- 
sent to allow her to see you.” 

5 61 


62 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


“ Money! Who cares about money? ” cried Vivien 
in an outburst. “ What I want to know is, is it true 
that, when you had a letter begging and imploring 
that she should have permission to see — her own 
children — even once a year — you refused — my 
mother ? ” 

There was a world of tenderness and protection in 
the way Viva said the word. 

She faced her father, passionately defiant. 

“ Certainly I refused,” said Meredyth. 

He had not believed even Evelyn capable of writing 
to her daughter like this, with hysterical complaints of 
him and of her own misery. 

He kept an air of injured indifference with some 
difficulty. 

“You did what you knew would break her heart 
and mine without even telling me. You knew I 
wouldn’t stand it! ” 

“ Won’t you sit down, Vivien? It is absurd to talk 
like this, my dear. Anybody would say that I was 
right ” 

“I don’t care what anybody says! I know that no- 
body will keep me from my own mother if she wants 
me — not you or any one else.” 

Meredyth felt himself tempted to a coarse word of 
truth about Major Arkwright-Gage, but he held it 
back. 

“Viva,” he said, “be a sensible girl. There is no 
good in discussing this, and in any case the question 
isn’t immediate. If your mother had considered you 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 03 

and not herself, she would never have asked you to see 
her.” 

Vivien was fighting with burning tears of anger. 

“ You were cruel enough to her when she was 
here,” she said; “ you needn’t speak cruelly now she is 
gone! It is your doing — all .” 

Meredyth recognised an unconscious quotation from 
her mother. He was not a man who grew easily angry, 
or showed it when he did. 

How he only sat a little more stiffly, and spoke more 
deliberately, with an obstinate set of his chin. 

“Who may be to blame, my dear Vivien, it is not 
for you to decide. I shall not allow you to visit your 
mother, as matters stand at present.” 

“ If my mother wants me, I shall go,” said Vivien, 
showing him a look in her face like his own. 

Meredyth shrugged his shoulders, and let her words 
pass. 

“ I believe,” he said, “ Evelyn speaks of inclosing 
money in her letter. I do not care for you to receive 
money in that way, as a sort of bribe. Will you give it 
to me to return, if you please? ” 

Vivien put her hands behind her back, symbolizing 
her determination. 

“ Money from my mother can never be a bribe. She 
knows I need no bribe to long to see her. You may 
be able, as she says, to take the little ones from her, 
but never me — never — never! ” 

“ That is enough said,” Meredyth interrupted coldly. 
“ I shall know how to make you obey me. Will you 


64: THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

oblige me by mending the split I see in your dress, and 
perhaps putting on a cleaner collar? Good-morning.” 

There was something of petty spitefulness in his 
last words — words which would, he knew, touch Vivi- 
en’s pride. 

He walked deliberately out of the room, saving dig- 
nity in his retreat. 

Nevertheless, he felt himself worsted. He was ruf- 
fled, irritated, perplexed. 

Mrs. Fraser-Latimer’s day being past, it was quite 
natural for him to turn to Alison Carnegie for com- 
fort. He had not been to see her almost for weeks, but 
now he went unhesitatingly, knowing that Alison ruled 
herself in all things not to take offence easily. 

When he found she was not at home, he felt an 
unreasonable indignation; but having come so far, and 
set his mind upon a talk with her, he waited. 

Alison came in tired and a little worried by a dis- 
appointing day’s work. When she heard that Mere- 
dyth was there, she went first to her room, dipping her 
face into cool water, and allowing herself a minute or 
two to rest and smooth the tired lines out of her fore- 
head. 

She looked fresh and strong and cheerful when she 
came in to him. 

“ This is nice of you, Henry,” she said, finding her- 
self a soft armchair and sinking restfully into it. “ I 
hope you haven’t had long to wait? ” 

“ I always come to you, Alice, when things go wrong. 
I am about at the end of my patience.” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. (55 

“I am exceedingly glad to hear it,” Alison said. 
“ I consider what yon call patience your worst vice.” 

Meredyth looked bewildered. 

“ I have been trying to get something to do,” he 
said, “ but it seems to be impossible. Nobody in any 
profession — or trade, for the matter of that — can en- 
tertain the idea of finding me of nse. I am afraid I 
may write myself down a failure.” 

It was quite obvious that he did not think so — so 
obvious that Alison let a little sad amusement come 
into her face. 

“ I have written and called, and made myself cheap 
generally,” said Meredyth, unintentionally exaggerating 
the extent of his efforts, “ and it all seems hopeless. 
The children are the worst of it.” 

“ But they are provided for, aren’t they? ” 

Meredyth explained, making little of the fact that 
if he had exerted himself there would have been a set- 
tlement on the children long before this. He told of 
Evelyn’s letters to him and of the last one to Vivien, 
which had made trouble. 

“It means, of course, that Arkwright-Gage is be- 
ginning to develop himself. She was quite happy so 
long as he was a slave. Now she must have another 
excitement.” 

Alison would have wished him 'to speak less hardly, 
but she excused him, feeling he had a right to be hard. 

“ And this brings Vivien .defying me. I told her 
I would make her obey me, but how can I? I can’t 
use force.” 


00 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

Alison listened meditatively. Meredyth, who gen- 
erally found a silent acquiescence sufficient, this day, in 
a depression, wanted more. 

“ Don’t you think I am right? ” he said. 

“ Partly. Eight in what you want, but not in the 
way you are trying to get it. There is no use in threat- 
ening when you can’t carry out your threats.” 

“But what am I to do? What is to be done with 
Vivien? Can I let her go and see her mother while she 
is living with that man? ” 

“No,” said Alison; “no, I think not.” 

“ Well, how under heaven am I to prevent it? Is 
it my fault that Vivien is as self-willed and obstinate 
as a mule? ” 

“ I think it is partly your fault,” said Alison. 

Meredyth coloured, his manner stiffening immedi- 
ately. 

Alison went on very gravely. It had come to her 
that this once, if he chose, he should hear the truth. 
She realized clearly that it might mean the loss of him 
out of her life, hut it seemed that nothing else would 
really touch him. 

“ I think,” she said, “ it has been a pity to let Viva 
be with Mrs. Fraser-Latimer. More than that, I think 
it has been wrong.” 

Meredyth lay back, stroking his mustache. 

“ Wrong or right,” he said, “ how could I prevent 
it?” 

“ It is very hard for you, Henry, altogether,” said 
Alison softly. “ And it is easy for people a little out- 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 07 

side, as I am, to speak. But — if you knew how people 
talk! ” 

“ It’s a new thing,” he said roughly, “ for you to 
mind how people talk.” 

“ 1 hope not new,” said Alison. “ One has to face 
their talking sometimes, but it is always a pity. But 
no young girl should he allowed to face it blindfold. 
I don’t want to vex you, Henry, and it is hard to see 
a help; but to say nothing is like standing aside to see 
a little child murdered.” 

“ I don’t understand at all what you are talking 
about,” said Meredyth stiffly. 

“ And then there is that young Maurice ■” 

“Maurice!” said Meredyth, drawing a breath. 
“ Why, that is absurd! Neither he nor Vivien has a 
farthing, and they are a couple of children.” 

“ But it seems a pity to start Viva — or both of them 
— in life with a heartache.” 

“Absurd!” Meredyth said. “A couple of chil- 
dren! ” 

They were older than he and Alison had been. He 
had quite forgotten, but the memory crippled Alison’s 
words. 

She had “got over it,” of course, and faced life, 
but she had faced it handicapped. The knowledge made 
her very anxious to save Vivien, while the girl’s dislike 
interfered with her personal action. 

Meredyth meditated. 

“I am a failure,” he said, “in every relation of 
life.” 


08 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


He spoke the words to have them contradicted, but 
there was a new ring of uncertainty in his voice. 

Alison forced herself to he silent, resisting the 
temptation to make him happy. 

He went on speaking, almost as if excusing him- 
self. 

“ My life has gone crooked somehow,” he said; “ it 
would have been different if I had married somebody 
else.” 

Silence. Alison sat still, not looking at him. 

He turned to her a little impatiently. 

“ Wouldn’t it?” he said. “Don’t you see how my 
marriage ruined me?” 

She saw he waited for an answer. 

“Don’t be a coward,” she said; “face your own 
share of blame.” 

There was a pause. 

“ Then you think,” Meredyth said in a freezing 
voice, “ that I am putting my own sins on Evelyn’s 
shoulders? ” 

“ I think that you are to blame about Evelyn. I 
think that if you had been a better husband she would 
have been a better wife.” 

Meredyth got up and stood, his fingers playing with 
the books on a table near. 

“I should like,” he said politely, “to understand 
fully. Do you accuse me of unfaithfulness?” 

Alison looked much the most moved. She was 
trembling. 

“ I don’t accuse you of anything, Henry,” she said 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


in a low voice. “ I have no right to speak, only just 
that we have been friends so long.” 

“ Save me from my friends!” Meredyth said, with 
something like a sneer. 

"I do think you were careless with Evelyn, and 
unkind without meaning it •” 

He interrupted her. 

“You believe that I may blame myself for what 
has happened?” 

“ Henry ” 

“ You believe that I may blame myself for what 
has happened? ” 

Alison's “ Yes ” was drawn from her, and she could 
not find words to qualify it. 

Meredyth took his hat and stick, and said good-bye, 
just touching her hand. 

He was very white. The world seemed shaking 
around him. Alison's words seemed to upset all his 
beliefs, and leave him with nothing firm. 

He walked home in a dream. 

On the stairs he met the children in the middle of 
an excited game of play which had burst all hounds. 

Jossy ran to him, and begged for his assistance in 
a search for the housemaid, who had found herself an 
unduly skilful hiding place. 

He was full of a just finished game of blind-man's- 
buff in the nursery, and tried to exact a promise for the 
future from his father. 

Meredyth put him aside, not unkindly, and spoke of 
chess later on. He noticed Jossy's delicate look, and 


70 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

that Milly’s hair was tangled and. half brushed and her 
frock dirty. He asked for Vivien, and heard she had 
gone out in the carriage with Mrs. Fraser-Latimer. 

Then he went upstairs to his room. A had husband, 
a bad father, a useless figure in the world. If Alison 
thought all this of him, what must others think? 

He caught sight of himself in the glass, and no- 
ticed lines under his eyes and the bald beginning more 
conspicuous than usual. 

“ I am a failure,” he said for the third time, and 
this, time with full meaning. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Henry Meredyth, in hearing plain words for the 
first time, was a man to pity. He had sauntered through 
life comfortably, not examining himself, content to 
know that he was not a man of coarse vices. 

If revealing words had come from any one but Ali- 
son, he might have laid them to ill will, and so put 
them aside; but Alison he had always known as his 
friend. 

In the loneliness of his room he grew to see himself 
stripped of comfortable illusions. His half-forgotten 
self of twenty years ago came to his memory, full of 
eagerness and ambitions, all connected with Alison, and 
fostered by her. In all these years of life he had done 
nothing, fulfilled nothing, got no further forward. 

He rushed to the extreme of intense self-deprecia- 
tion. A failure ! 

Pride, vanity, indolence, rebelled vainly against the 
verdict. 

With the morning he saw himself less clearly, and 
a dogged desire to prove himself worth more than Ali- 1 
son thought came to the help of his hopelessness. 

He collected the papers and took them to the smok- 
ing-room, searching for possible advertisements, and 
finding a few that he thought it worth while to answer. 

71 


72 the freedom of henry meredyth. 


He set himself to the dreary task of composing an 
advertisement. 

“A gentleman who has had much experience of” 
— what? 

“ A gentleman in temporary difficulties ” — that 
sounded too much like the beginning of a begging 
letter. 

“ Situation wanted. A gentleman will he glad to 
accept any situation ” — the ending that seemed to form 
itself to this was, “ with a good salary and nothing 
to do.” 

The vagueness of his desires and a shaken belief in 
his capabilities were against him. 

The thought of helping himself by writing himself 
“ son of an earl ” was not to be held. 

He rebelled against the idea of using his friends, 
but nevertheless forced himself to one or two stilted 
letters, almost resentful in their fear of seeming 
humble. 

His knowledge of his brother’s slight opinion of 
him kept him from a letter to Lord Meredyth, who 
would probably have been able and willing to help him. 
It might come to that in the end, but not yet. 

When he had signed his name to a few curt notes, 
he rang to have them taken away to avoid change of 
purpose. 

Evelyn’s letter remained to answer, costing him an 
hour’s time and many sheets of paper. He could not 
bring himself either to leave hers . unanswered or to 
refer her to his solicitors. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 73 

But it was hard to find useful words to say — words 
that she would consider final. 

Evelyn herself had found no such difficulty. Her 
sentences rushed upon each other, sometimes confusing 
the sense. She was miserable, and she wanted her chil- 
dren, or at least the promise of them. 

This, with a barely veiled and bitter allusion to 
Major Arkwright-Gage, was the gist of her letter. 

With the reading of it Meredyth felt as if the scene 
in court had been a dream, and his bonds hurt. 

The children were all at lunch, dashing into 
conversations of their own without heed of their 
father. 

Johnny and Viva gibed incessantly, and Johnny 
drank loudly, in a way his father found offensive, and 
showed himself very particular about his food. . 

Jossy was peevish, and declared himself teased, and 
Milly offended Meredyth’s eye worst of all, she was so 
contentedly dishevelled and untidy. 

He turned first upon Johnny. 

“ Johnny, are you drinking wine, and so much?” 

Johnny had a fine manner of sullenness. 

“ Hot more than usual,” he said; “ I always have 
some.” 

“ It is ridiculous, a boy of your age. A glass of 
claret — or ale, if you prefer it — is quite enough, and all 
you are to have in future. Do you hear me? ” 

Johnny stared indignantly. 

“And, Yiva, can’t you see that Milly’s hair is 
brushed? ” 


74 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

Both girls fired up. These sudden observations from 
their father were unprecedented. 

Meredyth’s new-found virtue continued to make 
him unpopular. 

That afternoon, hearing that Lord Maurice was 
there, he made his way to the drawing-room, proving 
very unwelcome. 

Maurice and Viva received him resentfully, espe- 
cially Viva, who took small trouble to hide her feelings. 

Meredyth held his place, and exhausted himself to 
find a common topic with Maurice, who was dull and 
shy. He saw exchanges of glances between the two, 
helped by Alison’s warning. 

When he saw Maurice would not go, he took him 
off and endured him in the smoking-room. 

He struggled for a word of warning to Vivien, but 
his courage failed, and he persuaded himself the hint 
would be sufficient. 

After this one day he found the path of virtue too 
thorny, and relapsed slightly. 

He followed up any answers to advertisements which 
seemed in the smallest degree hopeful. Most of them 
did not. 

One lady wrote with a view to matrimony, sug- 
r gesting a meeting. A man, whose rather vague ad- 
vertisement he had answered, took him for a woman, 
adding to a request for a photograph that he found his 
wife uncongenial, and searched for a sweet, bright, 
young girl who would go abroad with him as his 


niece. 


THE FEEEDOM OF HENEY MEEEDYTH. 75 

Tlie more hopeful ones found Meredyth fail in 
qualifications. 

The days took long to pass. There was not the usual 
satisfaction to be found at the club, and want of money 
and credit interfered with everything. 

People were beginning to leave town. The usual 
invitations came, if a trifle less plentifully, seeing that 
Meredyth had more or less fallen out of society, but 
were unacceptable, owing to the children and the ab- 
sence of money for etceteras and tips, always a heavy 
item. 

Lord Meredyth had invited all the children later on. 

With them their father made shy, self-conscious at- 
tempts to ingratiate himself, to their unconcealed aston- 
ishment. Only Jossy welcomed him. 

Vivien was unapproachable. 

She chose to blame her father for a certain slack- 
ing in young Maurice’s attention. 

The young man was not altogether to blame. He 
was not a bad youth, though a fool, and Viva had 
cheapened herself to him. 

She had her father’s adaptability to the people she 
was with, coupled with an unwholesome curiosity for 
new sensations. 

Maurice found her amusing, but she palled, and she 
shocked him. Vivien, full of a dangerous half know- 
ledge, said things in ignorance which even Mrs. Fraser- 
Latimer would not have said, and Maurice was too 
young to give her credit for half knowledge. 

He judged her, believing her capable of defending 


76 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

herself, and gave her no young girl’s consideration. 
No one could have needed it more. 

Viva read her novels all day long, beginning to find 
those with no curious, unwholesome flavour insipid. 

She listened with edification to Mrs. Fraser-Latimer’s 
stories, and made herself careless to men. 

Once, too late, Meredyth made an effort to separate 
her from Mrs. Fraser-Latimer. 

That lady’s gay greeting of him as “ Pat,” and 
seeming oblivion of their last meeting, conquered 
him. 

She found Vivien useful, as the usual niece or 
cousin happened to be absent, and in her way she was 
good-natured, too, and anxious that the girl should 
enjoy herself. 

Vivien listened dutifully to all she said, and hugely 
admired her. 

Mrs. Fraser-Latimer had a story about every one; 
she knew all the undercurrents of lives, or thought she 
did, which was equally satisfactory. 

To go out with her was like carrying on the reading 
of those disturbing books, and without their prepara- 
tion would have disgusted Viva. 

Mrs. Fraser-Latimer spared Viva’s aunt more than 
an innuendo, but she had stories of all the other women 
who drove past them in the park or stood with them 
on the stairs at crushes, and of the men hints of dark 
things. 

The misery of it all crushed down upon the girl, 
and the commonness. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

Mrs. Fraser-Latimer tarred all the same, bringing 
her to think of it as what must be. 

Viva grew to he unwilling to be alone or to think, 
and there came a look into her face that spoiled her 
youth. 

Alison Carnegie broke a ten days’ silence, which her 
pride would have continued, for Viva’s sake. 

She sent her a note, ignoring her father, and ask- 
ing if she with Johnny would come to dine and later 
go to a couple of dances. 

Vivien yielded to temptation, putting the blame 
on Johnny’s wishes, and escaping a strained evening 
with her father. She solaced her mind with the assur- 
ance that it would make no difference. 

Alison’s was the one wholesome influence upon the 
girl’s life. 


6 


CHAPTEE IX. 


“ The initial point is to raise the people — to get 
them better fed and more self-helpful, and the first 
step is to put a stop to the early and improvident mar- 
riages ■” 

“ The initial point is to bring you to the end of that 
very long speech,” said Alison. 

Abram Sassoon coloured, and then laughed. He 
was very young, very eager, and very self-confident. 

“ I know,” he said, “ after making a lot of speeches, 
a fellow is inclined to talk always as if he was making 
speeches.” 

“ And the great point in talking and writing is to 
say what you have to say in the fewest and simplest 
words possible.” 

Sassoon rebelled at this, which came from O’Neil. 
The two were always hot for argument. 

“ But Carlyle — Browning — George Meredith ” 

O’Neil laughed out. “ Listen to him. Miss Carnegie! 
Hasn’t he got the devil’s own cheek! ” 

Vivien, rather conscious of being overlooked, lis- 
tened, half idly. 

Abram Sassoon turned to her. 

“But isn’t there something in what I say? An 
78 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 79 

underfed, overworked creature only lives a half-awake 
sort of existence, and there’s starvation there — body and 
mind. Don’t you know how torpid the brain feels when 
you are tired? My God! these people are always tired! 
I say, feed them first, amuse them next, and then if, 
like O’HSTeil here, you think it necessary, proceed to 
make Christians of them. But make complete human 
beings first. There’s a confounded lot of putting the 
cart before the horse, both with Jews and Chris- 
tians.” 

“ You speak in truisms, my friend,” said O’Neil, 
laughing — his laugh came very readily. “ And you 
wander from the point, which is whether I am right 
to get up and encourage boxing competitions or 
not.” 

“You approve, don’t you, Miss Carnegie?” Abram 
Sassoon said eagerly. “You see, their lives and their 
treatment have turned these men into animals. They 
must hit some one. If they aren’t allowed to hit each 
other in a properly organized way, it will be their wives. 
You must begin at the bottom and work up.” 

There was danger of Vivien being forgotten in the 
mutual interests of the others. She roused herself to 
listen, bringing her mind to bear on this new develop- 
ment. This style of conversation was very different 
from Lord Maurice’s. 

With the vanity of youth, she found it strange that 
these young men were desirous to talk to Alison and 
not to her — to Alison, who in her eyes was quite an old 


woman. 


80 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

They were eagerly full of their interests and confi- 
dent that she shared them. 

Alison, afraid that Viva would find it dull, and 
more anxious about her than about the others, pro- 
posed a round game, with Johnny put forward as a 
reason.” 

“ We mustn’t talk shop,” she said. “ You two are 
dreadful. I am always struggling to prevent my women 
from becoming like King Charles’s head.” 

Abram Sassoon became eagerly interested and ex- 
cited over his cards, facing loss of counters with the 
deepest annoyance, hut O’Keil’s attention was divided. 
He still burst out at intervals with references to the 
controversy over his boxing competitions, which was 
raging hot in his parish. 

Sassoon, the more practicable of the two, laughed 
at him. 

“ O’Heil is always in trouble,” he said. “ In Ireland 
it was with his parishioners, because he would wear little 
petticoats and things. Here it is with the clergy over 
his debasing amusements. Did you ever hear the story 
of O’Neil’s rector in Ireland and the altar cloth with a 
cross on it? ” 

“ Don’t let him get started,” said O’Neil, colouring; 
“ he tells a story worse than you can imagine.” 

“ Hot worse than you do,” Sassoon said; “ at least, 
I don’t laugh from beginning to end of my story, so that 
no one can hear from it what I am talking about. You 
must know that a lady made O’Neil’s rector the present 
of a most magnificent altar cloth, with I. H. S. or a cross 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 81 

or both, worked in the middle, and the first Sunday 
this was put up there was the most fearful outcry among 
the parishioners. Afterward they tried to break in to 
the vestry and steal it away, and the rector had to have 
it guarded night and day. But the parishioners weren’t 
going to be beaten. One day, in the middle of service, 
six stalwart men walked up and seized the altar 
cloth. The rector was a man of pluck; he wasn’t 
going to be defeated in the face of the congrega- 
tion ” 

O’Neil moved impatiently. It was as coming from 
Sassoon, who was a Jew, that he particularly disliked 
this kind of story. 

“ So the rector seized his end of the altar cloth just 
as it was being snatched away, and pulled his hardest, 
though, alas! it was the strength of one man against 
six. The cloth held, and so did everybody else, and 
the amazed congregation beheld their rector gradually 
dragged into the vestry, still stoutly clinging. I rather 
think O’Neil was hanging on too, but this part of the 
story isn’t authenticated.” 

“ Likely, indeed!” O’Neil said, and laughed, rather 
vexed. He hoped, he said, not to meet Sassoon thirty 
or forty years hence, for he was preparing himself the 
old age of a bore. 

The conversation wandered and floated. O’Neil and 
Sassoon held it for the most part; they were bubbling 
with plans and theories. 

Later Johnny went home, and the rest went to their 
dance. 


82 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

Sassoon, on a hint from Alison, found a chance to 
talk to Viva alone. 

He had given her, for the most part, a share of the 
talk that had been for Johnny. 'He broadened his sur- 
vey of her now, and spoke differently. 

“Miss Meredyth,” he said, “I wish we could per- 
suade you to help us at the East End. It is girls like 
you — bright, pretty girls — we want.” 

He spoke in elderly and dispassionate fashion, which 
contrasted oddly with his very youthful appearance. 
He was a handsome young fellow, with just enough of 
the J ew about his face to characterize him, and an eager 
manner which attracted people. It was all the same to 
Sassoon who he talked to, and he was utterly without 
self-consciousness. 

Vivien, unnecessarily on her guard with mankind, 
found him strange. 

That all men were the worst of sinners was a con- 
clusion she had found herself vaguely drawn to, and she 
felt suspiciously for a motive. 

“ If there is anything to do, I should like to do any- 
thing,” she said. 

“ Anything to do! ” Sassoon repeated, with volumes 
in his voice. 

“Well, I can’t preach,” said Viva, “and I can’t 
box.” 

Sassoon leaned forward eagerly. 

“ It’s not Brian O’JSTeil you are talking to. Food 
and amusement are what I want to get. Of course, it 
is the Jews I am most covetous for, but one can’t keep 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 83 

narrowed in. All the same, Fm not an orthodox Jew; 
I couldn’t he, after Eton and Oxford. But I consider 
them the grandest people with the grandest religion 
in the world.” 

Viva felt herself growing in sympathy by being 
talked to as if she must sympathize. She had before 
been half pitying Sassoon to. herself for being a Jew, 
feeling it as a disadvantage to him. 

Her eager face drew him on. 

“ I am sure you won’t laugh at me,” he said, “ if I 
tell you my one dream. I want to get us all back to 
Jerusalem — to make us a nation again before I die.” 

Sassoon’s eyes shone. 

“ But you never will,” Vivien said. 

“ Never? Why, we are going back already — 'pouring 
into the Holy Land. Don’t you think it is a grand pur- 
pose for life? Something to live for, grudging' each 
day? If one could even live long enough to see them 
growing fit to go, and leave others ready to finish! ” 

Vivien was intensely interested. As about every- 
thing else, she wanted to know all about this, and was 
ready to listen to Sassoon as long as he wished. She 
brought her mind, following his, to take his place, and 
took fire from his enthusiasm. 

“I am talking to you,” said he, “as if you were 
a Jewess.” 

He was talking for his own sake now, having begun 
by trying to interest Vivien in their work at Alison’s 
request. 

It was a queer, youthful conversation, starting with 


84 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


the reform of the world, and ending in an exchange of 
ages and a description of Sassoon^s pnppies. He was 
equally eager about everything. 

Vivien was amazed to find that there were not two 
years between them, Sassoon’s life seemed so much in 
earnest. 

She found herself talking easily and readily to him. 

All his hopes were more or less mixed up with his 
nation. He lived among- J ews as far as he could, and 
would marry only a Jewess. He defended their cere- 
monials, which he did not observe, asking Viva if any 
other nation would have kept distinct as the Jews had 
through hundreds of scattered years. 

He took it for granted that this and many other 
things had been matters of thought to her. 

With their talk fresh in her mind. Viva was almost 
cordial to Miss Carnegie in the cloak-room. 

“ Will you take me to a people’s concert at the 
East End on Thursday?” she said, without her usual 
unwillingness to ask a favour. “ Mr. Sassoon wants 
me to go, and to play the violin.” 

“ I shall be very glad,” said Alison, looking it, “ and 
I will take you to tea with Mr. O’Neil’s mother after- 
ward. You will find that interesting. Have you man- 
aged to like Abram Sassoon, his name notwithstand- 
ing? ” 

“ Yes, he is nice,” Viva said, “ in spite of his being 
a Jew.” 

“ I wish he could hear you say that!” said Alison, 
laughing; “ in spite, indeed! ” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. §5 

They were a very cheerful party going home. Ali- 
son had been nervously anxious that Viva should enjoy 
herself, and the result was better than anything she 
had hoped for. 

She felt it ridiculous that she should colour for 
pleasure whenever Viva spoke to her in her new, friend- 
ly voice. 


CHAPTER X. 


Vivien had enjoyed herself exceedingly, and the 
excitement of the evening stayed with her till she found 
herself at home. * 

Dances for the present fulfilled her idea of paradise, 
driving away all thought, and bringing an intensity 
of enjoyment which was almost hysterical, and always 
followed by a revulsion which she had already learned 
to dread. 

The heated rooms, the excitement of a crowd, which 
she felt even in the streets; dancing, which she enjoyed 
passionately; men’s looks and words — all helped to go 
to her head. She could forget her unhappiness, almost 
forget she had any reason to he unhappy, and live 
eagerly in the present. 

She was beginning to find herself haunted through- 
out by the dread of a possible revulsion of feeling to 
follow, hut she had not yet learned to look upon it as 
a certain consequence. 

When she found herself alone, with the noisy, 
lighted street shut out, and the quietness of the house 
round her, her heart suddenly began to sink. 

It was in a sort of irrational effort to escape from 
what was coming that she hurried her steps, and even 
86 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 87 

began* to hum to herself very softly as she went up- 
stairs. The loneliness of it pressed upon her. 

Her father was the only person who slept on the 
same floor as Viva; the children were all higher up. 
His door was shut. 

Vivien’s own room was really only a dressing-room 
belonging to the room which had been her mother’s, 
and there was a communicating door between them, 
which it was still her pleasure to keep open. 

Mrs. Meredyth’s room was just as- she had left it; 
Viva had silently battled for this, making it her care. 

At first, when the pain was raw and fresh in her 
mind, it had taken her days to make up her mind to 
go in; on most evenings she had rushed herself into 
bed, looking neither to the right nor the left, for fear 
she should catch sight of her mother’s portrait on her 
dressing-table. 

But since a letter had come from that lost mother, 
it was different. Of late Vivien had established a series 
of queer little ceremonies which were never neglected. 

It was quite late to-night when she found herself in 
her room, but Vivien was far too excited to feel sleepy, 
and nothing must be omitted. 

She took off her cloak, and untwisted the soft 
woollen wrap round her throat, and then she went in 
to her mother’s room with slow steps. She drew off the 
bed-spread, folding it neatly, and, laying it aside, she 
turned down the bed, and saw that her mother’s slip- 
pers were ready with a strange kind of fanciful pleasure. 

It was not that she had any expectation that her 


88 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

mother would come, but that she liked to pretend to 
herself that she had. 

Some evening she would make fancies to herself of 
what the meeting would be when it came, which surely 
it would some day, and playing with her feelings to the 
verge of endurance. She could make quite vivid pic- 
tures for herself, working herself up to a state of un- 
controllable excitement. 

But this evening she was in a very black mood. 
How was it possible that a short time ago she had felt 
happy? What had there been about the evening to 
make her enjoy it? What was there in the world that 
was not miserable and sinful and — lonely? 

That was what it all meant; Viva was very forlorn 
and desolate. 

She threw herself face downward against her mother’s 
bed, drawing long breaths. It could never he the same 
again. Whether she ever saw her mother again or not, 
it would never he the same. 

Vivien repeated over and over to herself, “ I wish 
she had died instead,” doubting whether she fully 
meant her words. 

But if her mother had died, she would have been 
her own mother still, and now she seemed lost in a 
worse way. Viva had had an engrossing passion for 
her mother which had filled her mind, and almost 
driven out other feelings. With her mother everything 
seemed to her gone. 

Viva was not given to confidences, and she had 
nobody to confide in. She kept a diary now for the 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 89 

thoughts and plans which surged in her head, but 
even to her diary she gave only half confidence, though 
it would have taken no genius to read between the 
lines. 

She kept a time to write in it every evening, and 
cherished it in a drawer safeguarded by a special Chubb 
lock, having extracted an oath from Milly that in the 
event of her sudden death it should he duly burned 
unread. She entered into very minute particulars with 
this diary, though she failed in the honesty of a Bash- 
kirtseff, and represented herself to it occasionally rather 
as she would he than as she was. 

It felt to her as a kind of friendly presence in the 
room even now, and she drew up the table that held it 
and took it out, with a faint feeling of comfort. 

“ Nobody knows or even guesses what I think or 
that I think at all.” 

She had chosen those words to begin it, and she 
read them with a kind of pleasure to-night. 

There was a certain satisfaction in seeing her loneli- 
ness in words. 

She was not inclined to write to-night; the inter- 
est of the evening seemed somehow to have faded out, 
and in Abram Sassoon personally she did not take much 
interest. She had the inclination of a very young girl 
to despise him as a “ good young man.” 

So strange was her ideal of manliness that Lord 
Maurice seemed to fill it more nearly; perhaps it was 
because he never for an instant forgot or let her forget 
that they were man and woman. He brought an ex- 


90 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


citement into her life which she had already learned 
to miss in the days when he was absent without at- 
tempting to analyze it. 

His name came often into her diary, but for the 
most part in a half -slighting way and as “ a boy.” When 
they were together Vivien had a sort of instinct that of 
late, at least, he had the best of it, and so revenged 
herself. In her diary she had the best of it always, and 
was not distinctly conscious of misrepresenting matters. 

Refusing to realize his increasing coolness, she fan- 
cied causes of offence for him which she and her diary 
received. 

“ Young Maurice is always so huffy,” her entry had 
ended the night before. “ I suppose he is again offended 
at something. I laughed and talked to other people, 
and pretended not to notice, and once when he came 
near I pretended not to see, and he went off offended. 
So between us we spoiled the evening, for he is cer- 
tainly more fun than the rest.” 

Viva really persuaded herself that this was a true 
account, and that Maurice was offended and not indif- 
ferent. 

She had written a long four pages yesterday evening, 
finding a pleasure and satisfaction in it, but to-night 
even that palled. 

She shut up the diary, pushing it away from her 
impatiently, and began to move restlessly about the 
room. It was desperately quiet and still. There was 
not a sound to be heard in the house or in the street. 
Vivien would have given much to feel some human 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 91 

presence near her. It seemed strange to her that with- 
out outward help her mood could change from extreme 
enjoyment to utter misery. 

She could face and fight this dark cloud in the day- 
time in many ways. There was the strange excitement 
of the streets, where she could forget herself in imagin- 
ing histories behind the chance faces she met; there 
was her violin, which always came as a comfort, or she 
could bury herself in a book. But even this last way 
of escaping from her thoughts was shut off from her 
at night; Viva’s eyes were not strong, and suffered from 
being used by candlelight. 

It was those hooks to which she had gone at first for 
escape that had done the mischief or had helped to do 
it. Had she read them without the excitement of her 
mother’s story, and without Maurice to help to explana- 
tion, it might have been different, as Maurice without 
the books might have been powerless. Both together 
had left her in a half -aroused, half -awakened state 
which was inexpressibly miserable. 

Vivien understood nothing clearly, and the desire 
to know was upon her. She had always wanted to 
know. As a child in her lessons she had never been 
content to learn by rote like the others; she had always 
puzzled restlessly for an explanation. In history, where 
there had been a human element, she had hunted mo- 
tives and built up characters for herself till they felt 
like friends, and it was this power of hers which had 
made her schoolroom recitations much appreciated. 

Once, when she was about eleven years old, a friend 


92 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

of her mother had listened to her, and said, “ That little 
girl would make an actress and Viva had thought 
and dreamed of this till other things had driven it out. 

Of late it had been her mother and Maurice whom 
she had striven to understand as the two who most 
interested her. 

She was groping for a standpoint from which to 
face life and distinguish right from wrong. Yiva was 
driven hither and thither. Her father, Mrs. Fraser- 
Latimer, Alison, Maurice, Sassoon — all seemed to con- 
sider the world in such entirely differing lights, and 
which was right? 

Vivien had no one to believe in. She had believed 
in her mother thoroughly with all her heart. With the 
loss of that belief came loss of belief in everything. 

She felt the loneliness grow utterly unbearable. 
With it there came upon her the awful fear of nothing- 
ness. How much reality was there about her life and 
the lives of those about her? 

Where had she come from and where was she going 
to? If death came to her, as come it would, what 
then? 

Viva drew long, shuddering breaths, and felt her 
face damp with fear. 


CHAPTER XI. 


Vivien had no event of interest before Thursday. 
She spent as much time out of doors as was possible, 
finding the house very dreary, and also that to per- 
suade Johnny to go out with her was the only way to 
keep him both amiable and out of mischief. He was 
not a had hoy by any means, but he was dull and un- 
happy, and wanted some help to pass the time. 

The season was practically over, and town was grow- 
ing empty. 

Mrs. Fraser-Latimer had gone. She had called to 
say good-bye, and had asked Meredyth to come to her 
in September, and hoped he would bring Viva. But 
when Meredyth had refused in his sweetest manner, she 
had given Viva no separate invitation, though she had 
kissed her and patted her hand, and said how sorry 
she was that “ Pat ” was so obdurate. 

Viva wondered to herself over her father’s refusal, 
and wished she could have gone herself. 

They had no other visitor of interest. 

One afternoon Lady Meredyth took Viva to a match 
at Lord’s, to which a faint possibility of Maurice lent 
an interest. But he was not there, and it was very 
dull. 


7 


93 


94 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

Lady Meredyth, having brought her there, dropped 
her, and had men of her own to talk to, while Viva 
with her limited acquaintance saw no one she knew, 
and was bored and shy. 

As they drove home. Lady Meredyth kindly exer- 
cised the privilege of a relation by criticising Viva’s 
father very sharply, and giving her mother a veiled 
stroke or two. “ Aunt Judith” was celebrated for her 
capability of saying nasty things in the nastiest way 
possible. 

Of her father Vivien saw little. They seldom met, 
except at dinner, which was a less constrained meal 
now that Johnny was there to break the tete-a-tete. 

Johnny was quite willing to talk to his father, 
though they had little in common, and Meredyth turned 
to him from Viva with relief. 

Viva watched her father jealously. She would not 
ask, and had no means of knowing, what he did with 
himself all day long. 

She became conscious that he was changing ever so 
little, but the reason eluded her. He w r as growing to 
have a new line on his forehead and an increase of ex- 
pression in his light blue eyes. 

Vivien set him down uncompromisingly in her mind 
as content to be idly effortless, and not to face his loss 
of money. 

Two money presents from her mother tided her 
over any immediate pinch, and she understood too little 
even to wonder if her father felt it. 

In truth, it had gone so far with Meredyth that he 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 95 

walked many a time because he had no money to take 
a hansom, and that if he had failed to come home for 
dinner he would have been reduced to seek hospitality 
or to do without. These things felt to him as great 
hardships. 

The house would cease to he theirs at the end of 
August, and after that there was entire vagueness about 
the future. 

Vivien knew that their house in Lincolnshire be- 
longed to her mother, and wondered. 

Johnny took it for granted that he was going back 
to Haileybury, and Milly and Jossy did not speculate. 

In Viva’s head there was a wild, vague project of 
going to her mother. Nobody else in the wide world 
wanted her or cared what became of her. 

But the project was as yet without form or definite- 
ness. Though Evelyn had written how she longed for 
her, she had said no word of wishing her to come, and 
the girl realized obstacles. 

The hope of a letter made a daily excitement. Viv- 
ien got one on Thursday which filled her mind for the 
whole day, driving out other thoughts. 

It became a drag to get ready to go to Alison in 
the evening; the enthusiasm that Sassoon had awak- 
ened had proved short-lived. 

Still, she made her violin ready tenderly, with the 
pleasure she always felt at the thought of playing. 

It was by the merest chance that she met her father 
in the hall, and he asked her casually where she was 
going, driven by his occasional sense of responsibility. 


96 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

She would have preferred to answer nothing, and 
she said, “ I am going over to Alison’s,” in such a low 
tone that she had to repeat it. Like most hunting men, 
Meredyth was a little deaf. 

He drew to a pause, and looked at her doubtfully. 

“We are going down to a people’s entertainment 
at Bailey End,” said Vivien, with entire absence of in- 
vitation in her tone. 

“Yes,” said Meredyth, drawling out the word. 

Viva waited for him to move aside, which he did 
after a moment’s hesitation. 

“You might ” he began with deliberation, hut 

ended, “Well, it doesn’t matter.” 

Vivien searched for a careless question to tell her 
when he had last seen Alison, hut felt her earnestness 
would defeat her. 

Her rearoused suspicion made her very frozen to 
Alison. 

She found herself looking her all over critically, 
and deciding that no man would want to marry so de- 
cidedly elderly a woman. 

Certainly her father had, in her eyes, left youth far 
behind him; hut then it was young, fresh girls that men 
like that wanted to marry, she told herself, shudder- 
ing. 

If Alison ever came to fill her mother’s place, Viva 
thought to herself, “ I believe I could kill her! ” 

There was a ghastly coarseness in the thought that 
her father was free to marry. 

Alison was disappointed at the return of defiance 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 97 

in the girl’s manner, but she was glad, not only for 
Viva’s sake, that she had come. 

Though Meredyth had made no sign personally, he 
could not at least be.direly offended unless, indeed. Viva 
had come in opposition, which was always quite pos- 
sible. 

She skirted the subject as they drove through the 
city. 

“Viva, how are you getting on at home? Don’t 
you give up your house soon?” 

Vivien smoothed the fingers of her gloves into exact 
straightness, and answered “ Yes ” unresponsively. 

“ What are your father’s plans for the summer? Do 
you know? ” Alison persevered. “ I was wondering if 
some of you would come North to me — the two little 
ones, for instance, if you and Johnny go to Mere- 
vale.” 

Vivien coloured. 

“We couldn’t think of troubling you,” she said. 

The stiffness of her tone hurt Alison sharply. 

“ Vivien, my dear child, you know it is no trouble. 
I wish you would try and like me a little better.” 

Any approach to sentiment made Vivien fiercely 
shy. 

She grew crimson. 

“ Thank you,” she said. 

“And, Viva,” I wish you would try to be a little 
softer with your father, too,” Alison said, and Vivien 
answered sorely: 

“You don’t suppose that it matters to him or any 


98 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

one else whether I am hard or soft! I would go away — 
and never see any one again — only for one thing. I in- 
tend to stay and see ”■ — she straightened herself and 
looked fiercely at Alison — “ that he does not dare — to 
marry! ” 

Alison turned a shocked face to her. 

“ My poor little Viva! ” she said, hut Viva shrank 
away. “ Has this thought been worrying in your head? 
I don’t think it need.” 

“ You can never trust men,” said Vivien senten- 
tiously; and Alison could have laughed had she felt 
less sad. “ Do you think — please, Alison, I want to 
know exactly what you think — that my father has any 
right to marry?” 

Vivien wanted an answer, and she looked as if she 
intended to have one. The words had been very hard 
to say, and she might never he able to bring herself 
to say them again. 

She fidgeted impatiently when Alison waited for 
a minute, not hesitating over her opinion, hut over what 
she should say. 

“ It’s a mistake to worry and look ahead for trou- 
bles,” she began, “and my personal opinion can’t he 
of much use when so many others think differently.” 

“ But it is your personal opinion,” said Viva hotly, 
“ that of all things I want to know.” 

Alison’s manner was always very quiet, making a 
sharp contrast to the assertiveness of Vivien’s, but the 
slightest increase of colour showed in her pale face. 

She felt herself growing unexpectedly hot at the 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 99 

plainness with which the girl showed her thoughts, and 
was indignant with herself, asking herself if she had 
not passed the age for causeless blushes. 

She forced herself to keep her face still steadily 
turned to Viva, and answered quietly: 

“ If you want my own private opinion, Viva, I don’t 
consider your father free to marry.” 

“ And you would not marry a man like that? ” 

“ I hope,” said Alison, “ that I should never will- 
ingly injure another woman.” 

She felt that her answer was almost an avoidance 
of the direct question, and perhaps Viva, too, felt it 
so. She still searched her cousin’s face with passion- 
ately anxious eyes. 

“ If my father was to marry any one,” she said 
in a low voice, “ I believe I should hill her — or 
him! ” 

Vivien often verged on the melodramatic, but for 
the moment she looked quite capable of doing as she 
said. 

Alison wondered if it would be better to discuss 
the matter fully rather than leave the girl to brood over 
her dread in silence. But the difficulties surrounding 
this were innumerable. 

The end of their drive came as a decision which was 
not unwelcome. 

Without a break they could not have talked of any- 
thing else, and they both felt the difficulties of their 
subject. 

Vivien roused herself to look out eagerly. 


100 THE feeedom of heney meeedyth. 

An open public-house shed a bright, cheerful light 
across the road, and with its aid she had an impression 
of tall houses with dark archway entrances, with a fore- 
ground of ragged children and befringed girls with 
towering headgear. Beyond, some dim lamps struggled 
with the darkness. 

“ Young Sassoon built the hall himself,” said Ali- 
son, calling Viva’s attention to the place where they 
had stopped. 

It was not a handsome building, being largish and 
square and businesslike, and Vivien felt that it deserved 
no more than a dubious “ Oh! ” as she got out of the 
cab. 

“ It is a men’s club, and they have J ewish meetings 
in it, and night schools and coffee-rooms and all sorts 
of odd things besides,” Alison added. 

Vivien followed her in, making silent observations 
of her own. 

She had still the happy power of being able to dis- 
miss one subject by the help of another, but Alison had 
to pull herself sharply together to drive the pain of the 
girl’s words out of her mind. 

They were a little late. The concert-room was al- 
ready almost full, and was thick with the smoke of 
many pipes. Abram Sassoon met them at the platform, 
and took charge of Viva’s violin while he found them 
seats. 

Vivien, suddenly shy when she found how many 
eyes followed her, glued herself to a corner. Sassoon 
gave her a few words with divided attention, and then 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 101 

went off to talk to friends in the crowd. Vivien, who 
had always been taught strict civility to lower classes, 
hut never to look on them humanly, wondered at all 
he seemed to find to say. He showed quite as much in- 
terest in talking to them as he had done in talking to 
her some evenings ago. 

Alison spoke to a few people, but Viva was dispro- 
portionately in her mind. If the child could only be 
interested and given something else to think about be- 
sides these twisted jealousies, which were perhaps natu- 
ral enough! 

She looked very pretty and very like her father as 
she sat, leaning forward, looking from one to another 
of the audience and performers a little nervously, with 
her fair hair rather fluffed into disorder by the hat she 
had just taken off. Alison felt absurdly ruffled by Sas- 
soon’s complete indifference. Of course, they were both 
far too young, and there were many objections; hut 
worse things might happen. 

A moment later she laughed at herself for the ab- 
surdity of her planning, realizing how fully Sassoon’s 
head was filled with other thoughts than love or mar- 
riage. 

She tried to interest Vivien in the people round, 
but without much success. 

“Do you see the man Mr. O’Neil is speaking to? 
He is his particular protege , and he believes his boxing 
matches have cured him of beating his wife. But 
Abram Sassoon and I have our doubts, because the wife 
never confesses. Last time he was taken up she came 


102 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

into court with, two black eyes and swore he had never 
touched her.” 

“How disgusting!” Viva said, evidently mean- 
ing it. 

“ And that girl in the second row with a red shawl 
over her head? That girl is a very clever dressmaker, 
and again and again she works herself up into a re- 
spectable position. But always as soon as she has any- 
thing to live upon a drunken father and brother turn 
up and take it from her and beat her well into the bar- 
gain.” 

Viva listened, but it was all too entirely outside her 
experience for her to listen humanly. 

Alison knew she had only to touch her interest to 
make her capable of putting herself hotly in the place 
of these other women, and feeling with their lives. But 
the only story which seemed to rouse her . was one, on 
which Alison touched lightly, of a poor girl who had 
terribly fallen and hardened not to care. 

Vivien wanted her pointed out afresh, and Alison 
saw her eyes go to her often with a scrutiny of what 
might be about her outwardly different from other 
girls. 

She found the people on the platform, on the whole, 
the most interesting; they struck her as particularly 
queer. There was a mixture of every kind and class 
and style of dress. Viva wondered how their costumes 
would have struck her father, and meditated a few de- 
tails to amuse him at dinner. 

Those who played in the symphony which opened 


THE FKEEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 103 

the concert were for the most part a rough assembly 
in working clothes, with an odd performer here and 
there of a different class. 

There were various recitations, one or two remark- 
able for a lack of h’s, and songs with choruses in which 
the audience joined. 

O’Neil sang well, and Sassoon exceedingly badly, 
hut with complete confidence, and rewarded by much 
applause. He brought action and emphasis into a 
comic song, which he shouted out cheerfully and tune- 
lessly. Vivien would have been glad to put her fingers 
into her ears. 

Sassoon joined in applauding her violin, which was 
somewhat over the heads of the audience, and which 
he personally did not appreciate. 

He confided to her that the concertina was the only 
instrument with which he had ever been successful, and 
was not offended when she laughed. 

He also pointed out to her the person Viva found 
the most interesting in the room. She was a red-haired 
young woman, amazingly clad, and Sassoon gave some 
amusing particulars about her. 

“ She’s a most remarkable young person, Miss Mere- 
dyth. She has the greatest difficulty in bringing her- 
self to speak civilly to a man, and won’t accept the 
most ordinary politenesses. If I were to go to her now, 
for instance, and offer her a chair, I should get my 
head in my hand! ” 

Sassoon laughed, and found it very amusing. He 
was accustomed to be made more of than would have 


104 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

been good for most young men by mothers with mar- 
riageable daughters and marriageable daughters them- 
selves. 

“ She goes in for equality of the sexes, and has 
written a book that I don’t suppose you ever heard of — 

A Death in Life,” said he. 

But Vivien had done more than hear of it. The . 
book was lying on her table at home at that moment. 

Her interest flew up. 

Sassoon saw it, and went on lightly: 

“ She has a women’s club with mysterious regula- 
tions, which is for the improvement — or the extermina- 
tion, I am not sure which — of mankind. She speaks 
very seriously to all the young men she meets about 
their misdeeds and temptations.” Sassoon began to 
laugh. He looked upon Miss Madeline TJrquhart as a 
huge joke in the worst of taste; but Vivien coloured 
her into a heroine in a moment. 

This girl did not look as if she was much older than 
she was herself, and yet she wrote as if she knew all 
about the things that puzzled Viva; she had written 
a book which was reviewed and talked about and called 
wicked, she was president of a women’s club, and she 
lived alone in a flat. 

Vivien gave her all her attention; she played for 
her, and watched her face to guess her judgment of the 
playing of others. She wanted to understand how a 
woman felt who had written a book like that, and 
Abram Sassoon’s laughter did not move her. 

In the course of the evening Miss TJrquhart recited, 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 105 


which she did remarkably well, and a few chance words 
when their seats happened to he together completed 
Viva’s happiness. 

She was very silent on the way home, and only 
spoke once of her own accord to ask where Miss Urqu- 
hart lived* 


CHAPTER XII. 


Alison was speaking at a political meeting next 
day, and afterward Lord and Lady Meredyth took her 
to drive in the half-deserted row. 

Lord Meredyth, who had a good deal of property 
in Ireland, was full of the meeting they had just left, 
where a point of the Irish question had been exhaust- 
ively discussed. Alison, who was generally keenly in- 
terested, and had taken upon herself a share of the 
business of providing Irish lady delegates for England, 
felt personal interests in front to-day. 

She had given much thought to Vivien and Viv- 
ien’s father, recognising that, as things were, direct help 
from her of any kind was impossible. 

But it seemed to her not only possible but right 
that help should come from the Meredyths. 

Undoubtedly Henry Meredyth was somewhat hardly 
placed; he was not to blame for finding himself sud- 
denly penniless, though he might well he to blame for 
having been content to live upon the fortune his wife 
had brought him. 

But he, or, in default, Johnny, stood as heir pre- 
sumptive to his brother. And Lord Meredyth was a 
just man above all things. 

106 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 107 

She looked across into a pair of very honest eyes 
opposite. 

Lord Meredyth wound up a statement of opinion in 
answer to something in her look, and then he was 
startled with the abruptness of her change of subject. 

He listened, but he was not very encouraging. 

“ There’s no helping Henry,” he said. “ One can’t 
help a fellow who won’t help himself. He may talk, 
but that’s all he will ever do. A man of his age is hope- 
less.” 

“Jack, don’t be so uncompromising,” said Alison 
with a faint smile. 

“Well, what do you think I ought to do?” he said 
hotly. “ He’s utterly incompetent and lazy. I am per- 
fectly willing — I consider it my distinct duty — to help 
Johnny. But his father! ■” 

His contempt made Alison indignant, but she could 
sympathize with his point of view. 

Henry Meredyth had in many ways had as good a 
start in life as his brother, and much less excuse for 
idleness, and, while he had utterly wasted his life, Lord 
Meredyth had used every moment. 

In Henry’s place, he would long ago have worked 
himself into a good position, and he knew it, and was 
not of a nature to make allowances. His was immeas- 
urably the more admirable. character. 

Lord Meredyth smiled a little at the expression in 
her eyes. 

“Alice always says that I lack charity,” he said; 
and in answer Lady Meredyth protested: “We are liav- 


108 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


in g the children to stay, and we have asked Henry, too. 
What more can we be expected to do? It is impossible, 
for instance, for me to see mnch of Vivien in town. 
Girls of that age ■” 

Lord Meredyth was quite nnconscions of interrupt- 
ing; he had been thinking over Alison’s suggestion, and 
spoke when he found he had something to say about it. 

“ Don’t you see what Henry would expect? Some 
charming post with a big salary. He has no habit of 
exerting himself or apportioning his day, and no ideas 
of his own value. Of course, if I knew of any way of 
helping him, I should be only too glad. But probably 
if I did offer him something, I should only find that I 
had insulted him because it wasn’t good enough.” 

“ You make me feel frightfully impertinent,” said 
Alison, “ the way you have taken up what I said.” 

“ That’s nonsense,” said Meredyth, with his pleas- 
ant smile. “ Of course, it’s good of you, and I consider 
it your bounden duty to take an interest in all that 
concerns the family. — Don’t you, Judith?” 

“ She certainly is kind enough to take a great in- 
terest in Pat,” said Lady Meredyth significantly; “for 
my part, I think the best thing he can do is to marry 
somebody with lots of money.” 

Alison realized that Judith did not mean her words 
pleasantly, and was glad of Lord Meredyth’s entirely 
literal reception of them. 

As Vivien’s words had done the day before, Judith’s 
gave a shock in showing such possibilities of misinter- 
pretation. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 109 

“ Some one,” said Lady Meredyth, “ who would 
look after Vivien pretty sharply, and make her less 
uncouth.” 

“ Poor Viva! ” 

“ Poor Viva, indeed! The boldest, most ill-bred 
little person I know,” said Judith; and if her husband 
had not been there, she would have added the words 
on her tongue, “ Who is more than likely to follow in 
her mother’s footsteps.” 

Alison changed the subject; she felt sure that fur- 
ther words would be wasted; Jack would think it over 
and do what he considered right. 

Besides, though there were great gaps in the Row 
crowd, they kept on constantly meeting acquaintances 
belated like themselves, and any connected conversation 
was impossible. 

Alison soon grew tired of it, and said good-bye, 
going to a socialist lecture and so home. 

The Meredyths stayed later, both rather enjoying 
the unusual sensation of spending an afternoon to- 
gether. As a rule, they went their entirely different 
ways without disagreement. People said Lord Mere- 
dyth allowed his wife far too free a hand, but perhaps 
he knew his own business; at any rate, he sought for 
no help, and, though Judith’s behaviour had given 
rise to many gloomy prophecies, they had not been 
fulfilled. Not even Judith knew how much Lord Mere- 
dyth’s grave blue eyes had seen, or how little. 

As they drove home she plunged into a criticism of 

Alison Carnegie. 

8 


110 the freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ I suppose you see what it all means, Jack? She 
intends to marry Henry if he gives her the chance.” 

Lord Meredyth stared at her in unmitigated aston- 
ishment. 

“ Great Scot! What on earth do you mean? ” 

“ Absolutely what I say.” 

“ But, my dear girl, you must believe Alison to he 
a perfect fool; even outside her ideas on divorce, which 
you know well enough. She has a thousand interests, 
and lives a very full, happy life. She has enough money, 
but not too much. What earthly reason could possess 
her to do such a crazy thing? ” 

J udith shook her head wisely. 

“ That is all very well,” she said; “ hut when a 
woman comes to a certain age and isn’t married ” 

“You are talking of fools!” Meredyth interrupted 
hotly. “ I think very differently of Alison.” 

“ And then she was once engaged to Henry.” 

Meredyth began to laugh; he had a very pleasant 
laugh, which softened the slight hardness in the lines 
about his mouth. 

“ A lifetime ago! ” he said. “ You needn’t rake up 
a story nearly twenty years old. No, Ju; you won’t 
persuade me that you aren’t talking nonsense. It would 
be a dispensation of Providence for Henry, but for 
her 

Lady Meredyth was unshaken. “ Well, tell me why 
Evelyn was always jealous of her, and why that child 
Vivien hates her,” she said. 

“ Who could account for the fancies of a child and 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. \\\ 

of a woman like Evelyn? ” said Meredyth lightly. “ But 
I hope, Jndith, that if either of them ever hinted such 
a cruel thing to you, you did not encourage it? ” 

He ended very gravely indeed, and Lady Meredyth 
had to. pledge herself to many assurances. 

She could see that her husband was annoyed. He 
had a warm friendship and respect for Alison Carnegie, 
though he did not approve of her way of living, and 
had strongly opposed it at the first. 

He had the strongest objection to any life which 
brought a woman unprotected into knowledge and the 
world. 

If he had had a daughter, she would have had her 
outgoings narrowly guarded, and Judith would have 
met a stern check. 

But, according to her lights, which were different 
from his, he admired the use Alison made of her life, 
and he quite realized that her work filled her whole 
mind, and that she had never been a woman to desire 
marriage in the abstract. 

Judith was entirely mistaken; he refused to realize 
that in speaking she was putting herself in Alison’s 
place. 

He thought very seriously, and without consulta- 
tion with his wife, over what Alison had said to him. 

Alison herself, though she was suspected of a taint 
of socialism, was not so successful as usual in driving 
every thought except what concerned her business at 
the time out of her mind. 

When a rather prosy speaker uprose, she allowed 


112 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

herself to think her own thoughts, and let his words 
fall on deaf ears. 

Was she unreasonable in still having hopes for Mere- 
dyth, or was it because long, long ago she had known 
him better than any one else? 

It might he that nothing was left of the boy she 
had known then. 

Perhaps Henry was incapable now of thinking of 
anything beyond the cut of his clothes and the curl of 
his mustache. Jack seemed to think so, and young 
Sassoon had at once jumped to the same conclusion. 

“ The sort of chap who is always having his photo- 
graph taken,” he had said. “ I wonder you bother with 
him.” 

Meredyth and Sassoon represented different genera- 
tions, different classes, very different points of view, 
but, Alison told herself, they resembled each other in a 
certain sternness of judgment. 

But was any movement on her part to be put a stop 
to by such absurd ideas as those that seemed to have 
entered Vivien’s head and Judith’s? A woman of her 
age; a woman who had never shown any inclination 
toward marriage, and who had hoped she might now 
be allowed to live her life as she chose! Judith would 
have been nothing, but Vivien! It seemed very strange, 
for she felt clearly sure that such an idea had never 
come to Henry himself. 

Alison considered her life settled and mapped out, 
and was very well content with it. It was full, and 
brought her much pleasure. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. H3 

She had seldom time to feel the loneliness of it, 
though in her love for children she was not ignorant 
of a longing for a little child of her own, which she 
had for many years made np her mind was a precious 
thing she could never have. 

Her life was not the ideal life she had fancied for 
herself, hut in this she shared with her neighbours. She 
was content, and she knew she was not useless. 

When she went home that evening, she found her 
work ready for her. 

She had to draw out an article roughly, to be writ- 
ten the next morning, and she had letters to write about 
two of her women whom she wished to send to Australia. 
Then one of her matrons came to her with a question 
about management, and she was summoned to the laun- 
dry over some difficulty in the numbering of clothes. 

There was always this difficulty of lack of honesty 
to meet; women like those she was trying to help would 
risk anything when the craving for drink came upon 
them. 

There were constant disappointments to face; the 
women had not only to be kept constantly employed, 
but to he amused, if they were to bear the change from 
their old life. A restlessness came upon them all, and 
was the hardest thing to struggle with. 

Alison had a laundry, and a room for dressmaking 
and millinery, and some were taught carving. 

A better and entirely different class, who had never 
gone upon the streets or had been forced into the life 
and snatched eagerly at a chance of escape, she kept 


114 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

apart, and drafted into service after a time or to the 
colonies; even marriage sometimes solved the difficulty 
there. 

With these girls there was a hope which almost 
failed with the others, and less frequent disappoint- 
ment. 

They cheered her, and letters from them afterward 
helped her through times when she would have been 
otherwise inclined to despair, and think further effort 
hopeless. 

She spent a short time with them after she had set- 
tled the dispute in the laundry, and then she had to go 
out to a meeting of shopgirls a little distance away. 
She had had them at first in her own rooms, hut had 
found the knowledge that her house was a home for 
unfortunates made a difficulty. Sometimes when she 
was tired it was rather weary work to turn out again, 
hut she had so many helpers now that the necessity only 
came once a week. 

This evening she was glad to go — glad to realize how 
thoroughly her life was filled. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


“ Well, Johnny, are you coming or are you not?” 

“No, Pm not coming; it’s not much fun spending 
the afternoon with a lot of women, and I hate after- 
noon shows at the theatre. I told you I wouldn't go 
as soon as I knew Uncle Meredyth was going to take 
Milly and me to-morrow night.” 

“ Well, it’s rather horrid of you to leave me to go 
alone,” said Viva crossly, “ when you know it is for 
your pleasure Alison means it, and you told her you 
would go. I hate that long drive by myself.” 

Johnny and she were at one end of the library doing 
nothing, while Meredyth and Jossy were playing 
draughts at the other. Jossy w r as the one Meredyth 
found the most responsive of his children, and the one 
he liked the best. 

But he looked up quickly from the board at Viva’s 
words, and said pleasantly: 

“ Shall I go, Viva, in Johnny’s place? ” 

Vivien was undoubtedly taken aback; she stam- 
mered over her answer. 

“ Oh, I was only making fun; it is just because I 
think it rude of Johnny when he said he would go. 
I don’t really mind going by myself.” 

115 


110 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

“ However, I’ll take Johnny’s place, and do my 
best to fill it efficiently,” said Meredyth deliber- 
ately. 

“ It really doesn’t matter,” said Vivien, flushing; 
“ in fact, I don’t think I can go this afternoon.” 

“ Very well,” said her father calmly. “ I will make 
your apologies. — Jossy, I’m going to huff that man of 
yours; you must keep a sharper lookout.” 

Vivien felt she had not done well. If Meredyth 
was determined to go,, it would have been better for 
her to go as well. But, in case he had not meant this, 
of which she felt uncertain, she carefully refrained from 
saying anything more. 

She watched- him suspiciously, but he took no no- 
tice and calmly finished his game with Jossy, after 
which he equally calmly went out of the room. 

He had never troubled himself very much about 
Vivien’s wayward moods, and of late he had begun to 
take them as a matter of course. 

He had a few shillings in his pocket, and he took 
a hansom to Wall Street, without bestowing further 
thought on his daughter. 

He had not seen Alison for almost three weeks, and 
had parted from her then more than coolly. Her words 
had hurt him very much — so much that for a short time 
he had intended not to see her of his own free will 
again, but that mood had soon passed. 

He was conscious of a distinct feeling of satisfac- 
tion when he found himself in her room once more, 
with her friendly hand held out to him. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. H7 

“ Well, Alice,” he said, “ it’s cool in here and very 
hot outside. I expect I am covered with dust.” 

She was certainly looking very well in a long, cool, 
gray dress, which did not make her look too tall; it 
flashed into Meredyth’s head that she had kept her 
looks more 'entirely than any woman of her age that 
he knew; his sister-in-law, in spite of much aid from 
art, had entirely lost a certain freshness which still 
kept its place in Alison’s face. Her complexion was as 
clear as it had ever been. 

There was much pleasure in both her face and voice 
as she welcomed Meredyth. 

“Have you forgiven me?” she said, with a direct- 
ness which was her own. Most people, Meredyth 
thought to himself, would have contented themselves 
with ignoring that there had been cause of offence. 

“ I forgave you long ago,” he said, “ but I wasn’t 
coming to see you after all that till I had something 
to tell you.” 

“What? Have you good news? Has Jack ” 

“Ho, I owe nothing to Jack, thank the Lord! 
Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down, Alice? I have 
reminiscences of a particularly comfortable chair.” 

He was in a curious mood. Alison even suspected 
that he was a little nervous, he took such care to make 
his speech deliberate and careless. He lay back in his 
chair, stroking his mustache, and looking at Alison 
after a fashion of studying her. 

“How, Alice, wdiat would you say if I told you I 
had engaged to go out as hired guest at a guinea a 


118 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


night? It’s an easy business — you’ve only got to make 
yourself agreeable, and not to steal the spoons — and I 
have clothes I might as well wear out. What would 
you say? ” 

“ That you were talking nonsense/’ said Alison. 
But a certain grimness about his tone made her a little 
anxious. 

“ 0 Henry! tell me? ” she said. 

Meredyth gave a short laugh. 

“ Well, it’s not that,” he said, “ but it’s something 
in the same line. I’m going to travel.” 

“ To travel! ” 

“ To travel in ale.” 

Meredyth had not been sitting comfortably in his 
chair; he got up now altogether, and went, with a man’s 
instinct, to stand .with his back to the fireless fireplace. 

“ The murder is out!” he said. “You see, Pimley 
and Co. were the only people who seemed to consider 
my services worth having. I know fellows in most 
regiments ■” 

“Henry! You can never do it!” 

He caught her up sharply. 

“Look here, I thought your theory was that no 
honest work was degrading. I say, Alice, won’t you 
give me my first order? Pimley’s ale I can sincerely 
recommend. It’s a detail that I haven’t tasted it, and 
that I’m to get a percentage on what I sell ” 

“ But ” 

“ It was this or starvation. And though I might 
have preferred starvation personally, Jossy is a jolly 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. H9 

little kid, and I’d just as soon he had something to eat. 
Besides, I couldn’t have looked you in the face if I 
hadn’t made some effort. Will you have any further 
truck with a commercial traveller?” 

Alison looked at him with a sigh. 

“I had hoped you would have got something better 
than that — something you wouldn’t hate so awfully. 
There are Jack’s agencies ” 

“ Confound Jack! I beg your pardon, Alice, but 
I have no wish to be obliged to his Excellency the Earl 
of Meredyth, and I just hope it will cut him! Upon 
my word, if I believed it would really annoy him, I 
wouldn’t dislike it so much.” 

Meredyth was not speaking fast, and he pulled him- 
self up easily when the maid came into the room with 
the tea-tray; neither of them spoke till they were alone 
again, and Alison was rather glad of a little time to 
think. 

“ There, Henry, you can put in as much cream 
as you like; you are too particular for me to undertake 
it. I don’t like the way you talk, but I am sure you 
are right. If you can stand it.” 

“ If you knew how hard it is to get anything, you 
would be sure that I’d do my best to stand it. I sup- 
pose I’ve about found my level, and it’s a precious low 
one. Thanks, I’ll have some bread and butter.” 

The depression in his tone touched Alison very 
much. The opening of his eyes, whether it had been 
partial or complete, must have caused a man like Mere- 
dyth much suffering. 


120 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

He said a few minutes later, “ Alice, I suppose I 
must chuck my clubs? ” in quite a meek tone. 

Alison could not help noticing the frequency with 
which he shortened her name this afternoon — a thing 
he had seldom done for years. 

They seemed to be sliding into an unfamiliar posi- 
tion, she unwillingly, with open eyes, and he quite un- 
consciously. 

There was a curious return of something like boy- 
ishness in his manner. 

To break the silence, Alison said: “ I expected Viva 
this afternoon. Isn’t she coming? ” 

Meredyth shook his head. 

“ She’s an extraordinary child. She was coming, 
and then she huffed over it in some way beyond my 
comprehension.” 

Alison was afraid it was not beyond hers. She said 
nothing. 

“ It is so good of you to ask the children,” Mere- 
dyth said; “ you are so busy, and, besides, no matter 
how kind people may be in the country, as a rule they 
don’t bother about their friends in town. I am afraid 
Viva is an ungrateful little cat.” 

“ I wish you would let me take her to Scotland with 
me next month. You know my stepfather leaves me 
free to do as I please about asking people. I wish you 
would let me have Viva.” 

Meredyth laughed. 

“Let you! I haven’t much authority with that 
young woman! ” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 121 

“ And there is something else I want to ask you 
about her. She asked me the other day to take her 
over the Home, and I put her off, as I had not your 
leave. But I should like to. I am sure it wouldn’t 
do her any harm, and it would interest her. t)o you 
know, I should like to take her to one of the lectures 
a lady doctor is giving to my shopgirls; Viva is badly 
in want of a little plain speaking.” 

Meredyth shook his head at once; he did not pre- 
tend to any knowledge of his daughter, hut he had his 
own theories about women. 

“ Now, Alice, you know that is one of the things 
I consider worse than unnecessary.” 

“ And that I consider absolutely necessary for girls 
that have to earn their own living, for all girls before 
marriage, and necessary for Vivien, because she is try- 
ing to puzzle out things for herself. I am sure you have 
no idea, Henry, what hooks she reads — all these late 
women’s books that you and I agreed the other day 
ought to be put on the fire.” 

“That rubbish! I don’t think such utterly false 
ideas of life could do a girl any harm.” 

“ But how is a young girl to know they are false? 
I know you think you know a great deal about women, 
Henry, hut I am sure you couldn’t even guess at the 
muddle that poor child’s head is in and her difficul- 
ties.” 

Alison pulled herself up, finding herself on the point 
of beginning a sentence, “ If I were her mother ” 

Henry said: “ But do you propose to clear her mind 


122 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

by introducing her to your women? Why, you will 
probably only make her believe that all men are 
brutes.” 

“ She believes that already. Her choice of literature 
teaches her that. Henry, I do believe it is very impor- 
tant for that child to be frankly treated.” 

Henry had a manner of ending the discussion. He 
said: 

“ I leave it to you to do as you like. But I don’t 
agree with you at all, and I would rather not.” 

He was quite sure and distinct — as distinct as his 
brother could have been. 

Alison said she would, of course, do as he wished, 
believing in her own- mind that he was wrong, and 
troubled about Vivien. 

Then their talk floated back to Meredyth himself, 
a subject on which he had more to say. 

A good many people came in, largely literary peo- 
ple, who found this within convenient distance of the 
Strand, and had much to say that interested Alison. 

Her stepfather came, sharing Meredyth’s position as 
an outsider. 

He was a Mr. Hewitt Blennerhasset, a rich Aus- 
tralian, who, having made his money, had married 
Alison’s mother, and taken a big place in Scotland. He 
was fond of Alison, but utterly unsympathetic with 
what he called her “ fads,” and she had at one time 
found certain coarse jokes of his very hard to bear. 

But she had learned now the difficult lesson of lib- 
erality to the illiberal. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 123 

Sassoon, who had come by special invitation, with 
a view on Alison’s part to the entertainment of Vivien 
Meredyth, disliked Mr. Blennerhasset strongly. Abram 
had a very charming manner of deference with older 
men, but was put to his utmost to maintain it with Mr. 
Blennerhasset. 

He was a large, heavily built man, with an ex- 
pansive waistcoat and spectacles. 

For his part, he found Sassoon a great entertain- 
ment, and picked him out to greet within five minutes 
of his arrival. 

“ I remember this young man,” he said in a loud, 
cordial voice; “ this is the young man who proposes 
to put a stop to vice and beggary by stopping early 
marriages. — Have you arranged that little job yet, young 
man?” 

“ You are hardly stating that fairly, sir.” 

“ Isn’t that so ? Isn’t it a fact that you are going 
to give orders to that effect? ” 

Alison had serious doubts where this opening would 
lead the conversation to if it was left in Mr. Blenner- 
hasset’s hands. She watched for a chance of inter- 
fering. 

“ I don’t answer for the young men, but I’ll engage 
the pretty little devils of girls will listen to a fine-look- 
ing fellow like you, though you are a Jew,” Mr. Blen- 
nerhasset interpolated, in what he fondly believed to 
be an aside. “ Do you preach single life to them? I 
shouldn’t mind the job myself! ” 

“ You quite misunderstand me,” said Abram Sas- 


124 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

soon hotly. He was very touchy where his hobbies were 
concerned. 

“ Well, I am sure you told me all this. — Young men 
had a different way of getting on in our time, eh, Mere- 
dyth ? Our preaching to the girls was a trifle different.” 

Alison flung herself into the breach. She under- 
stood Meredyth was a man to feel annoyed at being 
unjustly coupled in age with Mr. Blennerhasset. 

“Why didn’t mother come?” she said, heedless of 
being irrelevant. 

Mr. Blennerhasset gave a jolly laugh. 

“ Your giddy mother is far too full of gaieties. In 
her time and mine people amused themselves, and 
didn’t devote themselves like this young man to saving 
souls and converting sinners and teaching Sunday 
classes.” 

Sassoon flushed hotly, but, exchanging a look with 
Alison, he brought himself to answer good-humouredly: 

“ At least, I can hardly teach Sunday classes.” 

Meredyth, who had got up to say good-bye, said 
under his breath to Alison, “ Do you think your father 
takes Pimley’s ale?” 

Mr. Blennerhasset shook hands with him, still with 
his attention centred upon Abram Sassoon, whom he 
imagined himself to have been lightly rallying. 

“Well, upon my word, I think the best thing is to 
live comfortably, be kind to your neighbours, and not 
go out of your way to pamper paupers,” he said. 

Meredyth wondered over the words as he walked 
over to his club. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 125 

They brought Alison’s life and his own into con- 
trast. He had lived comfortably and certainly with 
no unkindness to others — no active unkindness, at 
least. 

Were not Alison’s life and Sassoon’s and others like 
them, only' in reality their way of finding amusement ? 

Then his thoughts went specially to Alison. What 
a sweet face she had, and what a sweet wife she would 
have made to some man! How was it that Alison had 
never been married? 

The remembrance of their old engagement twenty 
years ago was so dim that it hardly touched his mind. 

But Pimley’s pale ale held the largest place in his 
thoughts. 


9 


CHAPTER XIV. 


“ You needn’t wait for Vivien,” said Johnny. 

He had come rushing downstairs, four steps at a 
time, at the sound of the dinner gong, and he was 
hungry. 

Meredyth asked him rather sharply if he never wore 
his tie straight, and took no notice of his remark. In- 
deed, he had scarcely heard it, his head was so full of 
Pimley and Alison. 

A few minutes later Johnny, being impatient, re- 
peated, “ Father, there’s- no use waiting for Viva.” 

His father asked why. 

“ She hasn’t come in,” said Johnny. 

“ Hot come in! Why, where is she? ” 

“I don’t know. She went out soon after you 
did.” 

Meredyth took out his watch and looked at it. It 
was eight o’clock. 

He put it back into his pocket so deliberately and 
absently that Johnny meditated another hint of dinner. 

But a moment later his father said abruptly, “ Then 
there’s no use waiting.” 

Johnny, who had visions of a pudding — almost a 
plum pudding — cordially agreed with him. 

126 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 127 

lie was not at all disturbed about his sister, and got 
• bored and went to bed about half an hour before she 
came in. 

This was after ten o’clock. 

Meredyth' was in the smoking-room, reading in des- 
ultory fashion, with uncomfortable reminiscences of 
what Alison had said to him about Viva running 
through his head. 

Vivien came in abruptly. Her mind was still full 
of the past excitement and pleasure of the evening. 
She faced her father, prepared for defence before he 
spoke. 

“ I hear you want to see me,” she said. 

Meredyth rose, concealing a certain embarrassment 
with an affectation of extra deliberation. 

“ Sit down for a moment, Vivien. I merely want to 
ask where you have been.” 

“ Where I have been!” said Viva, with careful aston- 
ishment. 

“ Hot such a very unnatural question, especially 
when you consider that Johnny and I waited half an 
hour for dinner.” 

“ I am very sorry I was not back.” 

There was a pause. 

Meredyth smoothed his hair and looked impertur- 
bable. 

Presently he said, “ Well, Vivien? ” 

Vivien moved uncomfortably under his steady look; 
beneath the shade of her broad black hat he could see 
the colour flush into her round cheeks, while she gath- 


128 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

ered her brows into an nneasy frown. She hesitated, 
and with her hesitation a suspicion flashed into Mere- 
dyth’s mind, bringing with it full discomfort. Was it 
possible that Evelyn had returned to London without 
his knowledge? 

He repeated his question rather sharply, conscious 
at the same time of his utter powerlessness if Vivien 
refused to answer. But she was not equally conscious 
of it; she answered unwillingly and pettishly, like a 
naughty child who dares not venture on complete re- 
bellion: 

“ I have been to see Miss Urquhart, if you must 
know,” she said pertly. 

Meredyth made an imperceptible movement of re- 
lief. 

“Miss Urquhart, indeed?” he said politely. 

Vivien drew herself *up defiantly. 

“ And I have no doubt,” she said, “ that you will 
object to this, as to everything else.” 

“ My dear child, if you trail your coat so incessantly, 
you can’t expect the most peaceful person to resist it. 
I still keep my temper, and I assure you that for all 
I know Miss Urquhart may he a most estimable person, 
or the reverse.” 

“ And you blame me because I am glad to escape 
from my miserable home, where there is nothing to do 
and no one to speak to, to some one who is willing to 
show me how to be of use in the world.” 

Meredyth’s face was expressionless. 

“ I wish you would introduce me,” he said. “ I am 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 129 

most anxious to be of use in the world — at a reasonable 
salary.” 

Vivien surveyed him contemptuously. 

“ As if it was for money!” she said. “Miss TJr- 
quhart spends her time helping the thousands of miser- 
able women who have no help, and that’s what I want 
to do — not to idle away my life uselessly.” 

“Pooh!” said Meredyth, very distinctly. 

Vivien turned on him with flashing eyes. 

“ It is only what I expected — only what Miss Ur- 
quhart told me I must expect. Men are all against us — 
against all attempts to help women. It suits you to 
have us at your mercy! ” 

Vivien was obviously quoting Miss Urquhart. Mere- 
dyth, though he did not know that lady, realized 
that neither the girl’s words nor manner were her 
own. 

“ That’s a nasty one for us,” he said, laughing. 

“Miss Urquhart says there are not three men in 
London fit for a decent woman to speak to,” said Viva 
hotly. 

Meredyth shrugged his shoulders. 

“Really?” he said. “How does Miss Urquhart 
know?” 

“ It is easy to sit and sneer at me ” 

“My dear Vivien, I hope my manners have not so 
far followed yours. Supposing we put off our discus- 
sion on the morality of mankind, as set forth by Miss 
Urquhart, whoever she may be, till to-morrow morn- 
ing? ” 


130 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ I have not the least wish to discuss that or any- 
thing else — ever!” she said passionately. 

She was in no wise a match for her father. He 
made her feel herself uncomfortable and ridiculous, 
and of all things this was hardest to a girl who had not 
yet found her level. 

She had come home excited by Miss Urquhart’s 
words and welcome, and with her head whirling with 
wild ideas for the future. How she felt herself all at 
once reduced to a state of paltry youthfulness and 
overwhelmed by the misgivings of a shy girl after im- 
pulsive action. 

What had Miss Urquhart thought of her? Very 
possibly that she was a gushing, hysterical girl, rushing 
to a stranger with confidences. When Vivien consid- 
ered the impulse which had driven her to Miss TJr- 
quhart, it seemed singularly insufficient. 

In her room she felt the black depression which 
had been driven off for a time closing in on her. All 
her dreams of active effort grew vague and impossible. 

But of one thing she felt clear — that she hated her 
father. 

She was certainly disappointed next morning to 
find that he did not even allude to the evening before. 
She was braced for a struggle, ready to take up a posi- 
tion of ill-usage and to oppose herself to unreasonable 
commands. 

She was firmly of opinion that she could not and 
would not yield were her father to forbid her to see 
Miss Urquhart again. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 131 

But Meredyth was exceedingly polite, and her pre- 
pared opposition fell rather flat. 

So, as before, she went her own way. 

Miss Urquhart made much of her. She spoke of her 
own troubles, of how she was misunderstood by others, 
and gained Viva’s passionate gratitude by calling her 
her comforter, and so making her feel of importance 
to some one. She promised to take the girl to many 
strange and interesting places, and assured her she 
w T ould show her how to fill her life. Most of all, she 
descanted on the wrongs of women and her mission to 
right them — a mission in which Viva should help. 

Viva listened, understood something, and guessed at 
much, and told herself with unnecessary reiteration that 
she entirely admired Miss Urquhart and her freedom 
from conventional trammels. 

Meredyth let her alone under this influence, as he 
had done with Mrs. Latimer, but with more qualms 
of conscience. When he saw his daughter he told him- 
self he must do something — at least, find out who Miss 
LTrquhart was, but he never got further than an inten- 
tion. 

He was just then very full of other matters; he re- 
lieved his mind by reflecting that interference would 
be useless. Vivien would not obey him. The next time 
he saw Alison Carnegie he would ask her advice, and 
see if she could tell him who Miss Urquhart was. After 
all — there was no knowing — this might be the kind of 
thing Alison would approve of for Viva. In any case, 
a day or two could not make much difference. 


CHAPTER XV. 


“Well, if Darwin’s right, what about Adam and 
Eve? In any case, O’Neil, I put it to you — do you be- 
lieve in Noah and Samson? ” 

O’Neil and Sassoon were having a busy morning in 
the library of Sassoon’s East End club. O’Neil was 
sorting the book-shelves, and laying aside those books 
which required stitching or covering, and during this 
process had somehow managed to blacken with dust not 
only his hands but his face. 

Sassoon, with his legs on the table, lounged in a 
chair, tipped back to a dangerous angle, and was sup- 
posed to be adding up club accounts. By way of relaxa- 
tion he was amusing himself by teasing O’Neil; this 
was so very easily done that he generally found the 
temptation irresistible. 

O’Neil was irritated and very much in earnest. 

“ Do you mean,” he said, “ do I believe in the exact, 
literal truth? Certainly it seems to us impossible, but 
then we know so little. I have heard it explained in 
this way: The world is not perfect, which we know 
without shaking our faith, so how can we expect the 
Bible to be perfect either? ” 

Sassoon whistled. 


132 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 133 

" Then, because we know there’s sin in the world, 
we’re to believe there are lies in the Bible? ” he said. 

O’Neil laughed constrainedly. 

"Not exactly. Sassoon, dropping Judaism has 
made you believe in nothing.” 

Sassoon’s handsome face flushed faintly. 

"Perhaps I am more of a Jew than you think,” 
he said. 

"You may easily be that,” said O’Neil sharply. 

It was always O’Neil who lost his temper in their 
very frequent disputes. He knew himself to be thin- 
skinned and irritable, and conscientiously struggled to 
cure himself. The frequency with which he allowed 
himself to be put out of temper by Sassoon was a real 
trouble to him. 

Sassoon had not the least intention of being un- 
kind, nor any idea that he was, only he could not resist 
"taking a rise out of O’Neil,” especially as it was so 
very easy to do. 

The conversation dropped. Sassoon went back to 
his struggle with the club accounts and O’Neil to the 
books. 

But Sassoon was in a lazy mood, and his attention 
wandered. He yawned, lost himself three times in the 
same column of figures, and began to draw caricatures 
of O’Neil on his blotting paper. Finally, he was rather 
pleased than otherwise when O’Neil, happening to look 
out of the window, threw down an armful of books with 
an exclamation of disgust, and announced that Miss 
Urquhart was in sight. 


134 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

Sassoon got up hastily. 

“ Hang it!” he said; “the ubiquitous Miss Ur- 
quhart! What on earth does she want to-day? Fm sure 
I don’t mind being made useful, but Fm. not particu- 
larly keen on being kicked downstairs at the same time. 
O’Neil, are you aware that you look as if you had 
washed your face in extract of soot?” 

O’Neil made a wild effort to improve matters, which 
turned several streaks into a smudge. 

“ Oh, good heavens! ” he said, “ is nowhere free from 
women? ” 

“ Sit down; you’ll only rush into her arms. Isn’t 
that Miss Meredyth with her, by all that’s wonderful? 
What the devil do 17/6 and £1 13 3£ make, O’Neil? 
Quick! ” 

“ I wish to goodness,” said O’Neil, “ that all women 
would stay up West and leave us to mind our own busi- 
ness! ” 

Sassoon laughed. He found something to laugh at 
in most things. 

He went to the door to receive his uninvited guests 
very cheerfully. 

“ How do you do? I was sitting with my feet on 
the table and a pipe in my mouth, Miss Urquhart, and 
must apologize for not having the courage to receive 
you exactly as I would a man. But old prejudices are 
strong.” 

Miss Urquhart had very red hair and a very plain 
face, and wore a dress made for comfort and not ele- 
gance, and rather obviously guiltless of petticoats be- 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 135 

neath. She held herself marvellously erect when she 
walked, and, according to Sassoon, struck the exact 
mean between the walk of a duck in a desperate hurry 
and that of a dismounted dragoon. 

“ Mr. Sassoon,” she said, “ may I beg you not to be 
impertinent ? 99 

“ I’m sure to get my head in my hand whatever I 
say, so I may just as well be impertinent as not,” said 
Sassoon. — “ I’m very glad to see you, Miss Meredyth. 
Won’t you sit down? I forget if you know Mr. 
O’Neil? ” 

O’Neil, who was and looked dreadfully afraid of 
Miss Urquhart, came forward to shake hands, and Miss 
Urquhart promptly remarked upon his grimy appear- 
ance. 

Sassoon, as usual, was the one to explain. 

“He has quarrelled with all his P. W.’s, so they 
won’t dust my books. Isn’t it unfair? — Miss Meredyth, 
P. W. is East Endian for Parish Workers — most estima- 
ble ladies who act as red rags to the clergy and keep 
things lively.” 

“ While you pause to take breath, Mr. Sassoon, let 
me say I have come to ask you if you will take us 
over Oxford House. Miss Meredyth would like to see 
it.” 

Vivien had said nothing. She stood by the door, 
hesitating and a little shy, a patch of colour in the blue 
linen dress that matched her eyes, with her wavy, fair 
hair brought into sharp contrast under her black straw 
hat. 


136 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

Sassoon thought her prettier than he had done be- 
fore. He smiled to her in friendly fashion, and said 
he was really very sorry, but he absolutely must go up 
West in half an hour. “ Perhaps O’Neil ■” 

“ I’m sorry I can’t,” said O’Neil hastily; “ I must go 
round to the C. 0. S. about a case of mine.” 

“ I’m sorry,” said Sassoon, “ hut don’t you know the 
other fellows? You’ll probably find some one in. Or 
why not take Miss Meredyth to the People’s Palace or 
Toynbee Hall for to-day? I’ll be delighted some other 
time.” 

Miss Urquhart said, rather sharply, that she had 
not time to run over the East End sight-seeing, and no 
wish to trouble anybody, hut Sassoon was not much 
disturbed by the sound of offence in her voice. 

He had a theory that, as whatever he said or did 
Miss Urquhart was sure to he offended in the end, it did 
not matter much at what stage of the interview. The 
mere fact of his being a man was offensive in itself — the 
worst offence. 

“ Perhaps,” he said amiably, “ as you are here. Miss 
Meredyth might care to see the billiard and reading 
rooms and so on?” 

“ They’re not much to see,” said Miss Urquhart. 

Sassoon looked a little hurt; then he laughed. But 
Viva was both embarrassed and distressed; Miss Ur- 
quhart, she thought, could not know that Sassoon had 
built the place himself. 

She turned to him, flushing. 

“ Please, Mr. Sassoon, take me,” she said. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 137 


Miss Urquhart seated her&elf resignedly, and said 
if Vivien really wished to go, she would wait for her. 

Whereupon Sassoon very politely suggested that she 
might like to finish his accounts for him — Sassoon had 
a calm way of doing things which amused his friends, 
and was often useful. 

He was delighted to show Viva round his club; 
there was nothing he liked better. 

He took her through all the rooms, and explained 
them and his system and ideas. 

Finally, he sat on the billiard table and held forth 
to Viva, for whom he had found a chair. 

“ I hope Fm not boring you,” he said; “ it inter- 
ests me so much, you see, that Fm inclined to bore 
other people. And I know this is not much of a place, 
but I screwed every penny I could out of my guardian. 
Next year, when I come of age, Fm going to alter it 
all.” 

He proceeded to explain how, and pulled himself up 
in the middle to apologize. 

“ What a bore I am ! But I feel somehow as if you 
really were interested. IFs not like when I go up West 
and Fm introduced to a girl and she feels it her duty 
to begin to talk East End at once, though she doesn’t 
care twopence about it. That drives me wild.” 

“ I do care,” said Viva. “ Miss Urquhart has just 
taken me to some dreadful places ■” 

“ Miss Urquhart! I beg your pardon for interrupt- 
ing you, but Miss Urquhart is one of those people who 
do harm. She really knows nothing about -work down 


138 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

here, and just thinks it a show. I say, Miss Meredyth, 
can you play billiards?” 

Vivien laughed, and declined to try. 

Sassoon’s boyishness and light-heartedness infected 
her, and his good-fellowship. He told Viva a great deal 
about what he was going to do after his eventful twenty- 
first birthday. 

He intended to have a lot of office clerks and shop- 
men to stay at his place on the river, and they were 
to row and play cricket and have an excellent time alto- 
gether. 

Didn’t Miss Meredyth think it would be a good 
plan? That class got helped by nobody, and there were 
very few ways in which it could be helped. 

“ And when I am married,” he said, “ I shall have 
governesses and women clerks and so on as well. Do 
you think I could have them before?” 

“ I should think you could, with a chaperon,” said 
Viva; “but wouldn’t it be awkward if they all began 
to fall in love with each other?” 

Sassoon was damped for a moment by this obvious 
difficulty, but he soon brightened and said he thought 
it might be managed. 

“ But it will be simpler when I am married,” he 
added. 

“ When are you going to be married? ” said Viva 
naturally. 

Sassoon laughed. 

“ I don’t know,” he said; “ I can’t settle till I know 
who I am going to marry.” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 139 

" Oh, is it so vague as that?” said Viva. 

" It’s not so very vague. You see, I won’t marry 
any one but a Jewess, if I can get one to have 
me.” 

“ But supposing,” said Viva, very sensibly, " you 
fall in love with a Christian?” 

" I won’t; I’ve thought about it, and I am pretty 
sure it is the mood you happen to be in when you meet 
a girl, and not the girl herself that does it.” 

“ So if you feel a susceptible mood coming on, 
you’ll arrange to be within sight of a Jewess,” said 
Viva, and they both laughed, being easily amused. 

“ Miss Urquhart doesn’t believe in marriage,” said 
Viva. 

“ Miss Urquhart! ” 

Sassoon picked the red ball out of a pocket, and 
began making vague shots at the other end of the 
table. 

“ Forgive me if Miss Urquhart is a friend of yours,”* 
he said, "but she’s not genuine; she only wants to be 
talked about. If she was asked, she’d go to the altar 
like a lamb. I wouldn’t trust her to refuse to come 
under the Chuppah with me.” 

“ You don’t like Miss Urquhart,” said Viva. 

" Indeed, I don’t. I don’t like to be reformed so 
very violently, and she doesn’t think that a woman can 
insult a man. It makes me rude to talk of her. Miss 
Meredyth. Look here, the other day she came up to 
me: 0 Mr. Sassoon!’ she said, f I’ve just been to a 
synagogue, and I assure you I never laughed so much 


140 THE FREEDOM of henry meredyth. 

in my life/ That was a tactful sort of thing to say, 
wasn’t it? ” 

Vivien laughed in spite of herself at Sassoon’s imita- 
tion of Miss Urquhart’s voice and manner. 

Miss Urquhart herself interrupted them. She had 
grown impatient, and came to carry off Viva with a 
scanty courteous farewell to Sassoon, who said good- 
bye to them both very cheerfully. 

He took a tram to Aldgate, and went up West by 
underground. Six months ago it would not have oc- 
curred to him to do anything but take a hansom. 

He did not waste much thought on Viva on the 
way. He said to himself that she was a nice girl, and 
that it was extraordinary that her people let her go 
about with a woman like Miss Urquhart, who was not 
even a lady. Then he forgot all about her. 

He had so many keen interests in life: there was 
his work in the East End and his projects for the Jews — 
to these things and to the writing of his novel he had 
chiefly devoted the last six months of his life. 

But Sassoon thought nothing of spending half the 
day down East, and the other half at a cricket match 
or a dance; he was desperately full of energy. 

More people than O’Neil found him trying. He 
was hot for new projects, and could not endure to put 
up with makeshifts or imperfections. When he saw 
something wrong, he had no patience to wait or tem- 
porize, but insisted on dashing straight at a cure; nei- 
ther did he bear well with the occasional stupidities 
and half-heartedness he met with among fellow-workers. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 141 

He would have liked to proceed on a system of summary 
dismissal of help, tempered with any imperfections. 
Consequently, though he could and did work well, he 
could not make others work, and often did as much 
harm as good. 

Probably his position had taught him to be im- 
perious. 

His guardians had allowed him to do much as he 
liked, and he had always been exceedingly independent 
and accustomed to be made of importance. Also, he 
had never in his life felt the want of money, and in all 
probability never would. 

With it all, with his imperiousness and obstinacy 
and frankly good opinion of himself, everybody liked 
Sassoon — even O’Neil, in whose parish he worked and 
made himself occasionally very troublesome. 


10 


CHAPTER XYI. 


Meredyth had the pleasure of meeting Miss TTr- 
quhart in the course of the week. 

He went to the drawing-room one afternoon and 
found her there, engrossed in conversation with Mau- 
rice, who had been captured somewhere, and was having 
a heavy time of it. 

Miss Urquhart was short and angular and amaz- 
ingly attired. 

She made a point of dressing with what she called 
simplicity, and always drew her thin red hair tightly 
hack into a little knob which was not becoming to a 
naturally plain face. 

Meredyth had his attention drawn to her at once, 
and studied her old-fashioned covert coat and dingy 
green skirt from his seat, entranced in an effort to 
ascertain whether or not a suspicion of elastic-sided 
boots was founded on fact. 

There were several other people in the room, hut 
none of them interested him in the slightest degree. 
He drank tea, and talked languidly about dances and 
theatres to a girl who was vague to him. 

Viva, on her part, made little concealment of the 
fact that she was not interested in what she was saying; 
her eyes went constantly to Maurice. 

142 


THE FEEEDOM OF HENEY MEEEDYTH. 143 

This young man had turned to Miss Urquhart in 
preference to the discomfort of his relations with Viva, 
and had since repented. 

He sat on the edge of his chair, and looked shy and 
very much frightened. 

Miss Urquhart spoke with much energy and a cer- 
tain amount of gesticulation. 

“ You have never thought seriously of such things? 
I dare say not, but there is your blame. It drives me 
mad to think of that excuse put forward as sufficient.” 

“ I dare say — I expect you’re right,” said Maurice, 
in evident alarm. 

Miss Urquhart leaned forward and spoke impres- 
sively, marking her words with one hand on the other. 

“ Lord Maurice,” she said, “ it is adding insult to 
injury to say you have never thought. Do you know 
that at this moment in London there are thousands 
of outcast women, thousands of illegitimate children, 
ruined before they are born, and you are responsible 
for them all? ” 

Maurice, crimson, stared at her blankly. 

“ Oh, I say ! ” he protested helplessly. 

“ You, and such as you! You think because you 
have a handle to your name ” 

“I assure you, I don’t.” 

“ You think because you have a handle to your 
name,” Miss Urquhart repeated ruthlessly, “that you 
are free to act as you please — to outrage all laws, phys- 
ical and moral ■” 


“ I think nothing of the kind,” said Maurice, with 


144 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

signs of sulkiness. “ I do well enough, and it’s not a 
disgrace that I know of. I must live, I suppose.” 

Here Meredyth, greatly to his disappointment, lost 
the thread, in consequence of having to speed the vague 
young woman and her family on their way. 

When he came upstairs again he went to Maurice’s 
rescue, and turned him over, too crushed for any effort 
of his own, to Viva’s care. 

Then he drew up a chair beside Miss Urquhart with 
his sweetest smile and air of completest simplicity. 

“ You’ve rather settled him,” he began. 

“ I consider it,” said Miss Urquhart solemnly, “ my 
duty to speak to young men to whom no one speaks. I 
should not easily forgive myself if I neglected it, and I 
am prepared for any suffering or rudeness which it 
may bring upon me. As .the world is at present, when 
a woman tries to meet men on their own ground, she 
must be prepared for rudeness.” 

“ As it is, you know, you must admit that some 
women can give men points as to rudeness,” said Mere- 
dyth confidentially. 

“I don’t admit anything of the kind,” said Miss 
Urquhart with some asperity. 

“ Perhaps you are right. You won’t mind my 
saying that it’s a well-known fact that men can do 
everything better — even dress, if they put their minds 
to it. 

“ Because we have never had a chance. Wait a 
few years. Women have got tired of working for bed 
and board, with the perquisite of a few children thrown 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 145 

in. It is men’s turn now. We are going to make a 
complete change.” 

“ Won’t there be — some difficulty — in making the 
change complete ?” said Meredyth delicately. 

“ Certainly not,” said Miss Urquhart with decision. 

At the other side of the room Viva, half blind with 
a bad headache, was trying to talk to Maurice, who 
was not seconding her efforts. 

He was anxious to go, but he was waiting for Miss 
Urquhart to precede him, in the fear that otherwise she 
might in some wise seize upon him. 

Meredyth, on the contrary* enjoyed himself. He 
brought his most suave manner to bear, and encouraged 
Miss Urquhart to talk, parting with her in the end 
quite regretfully. 

Later he contented himself with a few careless words 
to Viva. “You won’t see that young Maurice back 
in a hurry. He’s under the impression that you’ve intro- 
duced him to a raving lunatic.” 

Vivien had her own misgivings. She turned a 
flushed face on her father. 

“ Of course,” she said, “ you are against her be- 
cause she is my intimate friend.” 

“ On the contrary, I assure you she amused me im- 
mensely. But in the matter of intimate friends, I 
would personally prefer you to choose a lady.” 

“ You say she is not a lady because she wears 
shabby clothes,” said Viva hotly. “ Miss Urquhart does 
not care about clothes — she is content to dress so as not 
to be remarkable.” 


146 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ I am glad you told me that,” said Meredyth. “ I 
should never have guessed that was her object. All 
the same, I don’t fancy her father was absolutely a 
prince. Why, Yivien, how ill you look! ” he ended, 
suddenly struck by his daughter’s flushed face and the 
heavy lines under her eyes. 

“ It doesn’t matter,” said Viva sorely; “ it is only 
that I have a sore throat and my head aches.” 

Meredyth felt himself encouraged to no further in- 
quiries. He followed Yivien from the room with a 
rather troubled glance, and then Jossy appeared and 
pounced upon him for chess. 

Meredyth was just now rather hard put to it to dis- 
pose of his time; he was thrown off his usual lines and 
his usual ways of disposing of his days. He was also 
beginning to realize how wonderfully quickly and easily 
a man could drop out of the society in which his life 
had been spent. 

But, most of all, he had been unsettled by the new 
world which had of late opened to him of people with 
absolutely different views of life, living differently, 
with different measurements of all things. 

He, like Yivien, was conscious of having somewhat 
lost his bearings. 

And his first expedition in the interests of Pimley’s 
ale was only two days in the future. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


Vivien dragged herself about all the next day, sick 
and miserable. Even out of her violin she could get no 
comfort, and her head ached so that she could not 
read. She spent most of the day huddled on the sofa, 
and went to bed with a mustard plaster on her throat 
and brown paper steeped in vinegar on her head. 

The next morning, when Meredyth was in the smok- 
ing-room, having a final pipe to brace him up for his 
much-dreaded expedition, Vivien put in her head at 
the door. 

“ Father,” she said, “I came to tell you that the 
doctor has just been, and that he says I have got scarlet 
fever.” 

Vivien spoke with a certain sense of importance, 
and was rather gratified by her father’s prompt 
dismay. 

“ Good heavens!” he said; “what is to be done?” 

“ I won’t come in,” said Viva, “ as I don’t want to 
infect the room. The maids are taking up carpets and 
so on in my room. Will you wire to Aunt Judith? 
She was coming this morning to say good-bye before 
they start for Merevale, and I know she is terrified at 
the idea of infection.” 


147 


148 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

Meredyth sat and considered, smoothing his hair 
by instinct, and looking somewhat distracted. 

“ What on earth is to he done ? Are yon certain 
the doctor made no mistake? I wish I had seen him. 
We ought to leave this house at the end of the month; 
and, besides that, there’s Johnny’s going to school. It 
will upset everything.” 

“ I am very sorry, but I can’t help it.” 

Viva’s face hardened; she told herself that he did 
not think of her, only of the inconvenience and of his 
fear of infection for himself. In this, at least, she 
did her father injustice; Meredyth, like most men, did 
fear infection, but at present he was only thinking 
of it as connected with Pimley’s ale. 

“ The doctor is going to send a nurse,” said Vivien 
stiffly. 

“ But is it really scarlet fever? ” said Meredyth. “ I 
can scarcely believe it, with you standing there talking 
to me.” 

“ I feel bad enough.” 

Meredyth went into a brown study. 

“ Look here, Vivien,” he said at last, “ I am very 
sorry, but I must go at once, as I’ve got to go down to 
Windsor.” 

The two seemed bound to misunderstand one an- 
other. Meredyth was so little given to speech with 
his daughter that it did not occur to him to explain, 
and Vivien told herself sorely that he could not forget 
his amusement for a moment, even though she might 
perhaps be going to die. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 149 

“ I shall be away all day,” said Meredyth, “ and the 
best thing I can think of is to put Johnny in a hansom 
and send him to Alison Carnegie. I’ll give him a note 
for her. She may be able to suggest what to do with 
the children — or something.” 

Vivien’s cheeks were flushed already; they suddenly 
flamed into vivid scarlet. 

“Never!” she said excitedly. “I will never allow 
that! ” 

Meredyth opened his light blue eyes very wide and 
stared at her. “ Why in the world not? I should think 
you would be very glad to have Alison to help.” 

“I would rather go out and die in the streets — and 
I will first! ” said Viva passionately. 

“You are a most ungrateful girl!” said Meredyth 
in a hard, angry voice; “you are giving way to an 
absurd childish prejudice.” 

“I am not such a child as you imagine — nor so 
blind! ” 

Meredyth rose, took his pipe out of his mouth, and 
began to knock the ashes into a brass tray. 

“My dear, you are feverish,” he said; “go up to 
bed and send Johnny to me at once. I haven’t a 
minute.” 

“ Oh, how can you! ” 

“ What under the sun do you mean? Once for all, 
Vivien, what is the sense of the way you behave to 
Alison? ” 

Vivien suddenly burst into tears. 

“ Oh,” she said, “ I can’t bear it! Do you think I 


150 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

don’t know that yon want to marry Alison? Oh, what 
shall I do, what shall I do ? ” 

Meredyth’s pipe slipped through his fingers and 
dropped on the carpet. He stood, absolutely silent, and 
stared at Vivien, who sobbed and dried her eyes dis- 
consolately with her handkerchief, considerably alarmed 
as to the effect of her words. 

Presently he walked over to the fireplace and began 
absently to tear up paper spills into minute pieces. 

Vivien watched him nervously. She was ill, miser- 
able, and frightened — a woman always is frightened 
when she finds a particularly audacious speech received 
in silence by a man. 

Meredyth’s face was rather white, but was other- 
wise carefully expressionless. Vivien felt the pause 
endless before he spoke. 

He rang the bell and moved toward her, stooping 
to pick up his pipe, and speaking in rather a constrained 
voice. 

“ I beg, Vivien, that you will never say anything of 
the kind again. You must be aware that you are talk- 
ing the most unfounded, malicious nonsense. Let this 
end it. I must go now, and I don’t quite know at 
what time I shall get back. I suppose a nurse will be 

here to look after you, and Spenser,” Meredyth 

interrupted himself as the door opened, “ please call a 
hansom and send Master Johnny here at once.” 

Vivien gave her father one passionate, troubled look, 
and turned away. Meredyth took no notice; he saw 
no sense in being turned from his purpose. Opposition 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 151 

generally drove him into a stubborn following of his 
own way, and in this case he could see nothing else 
to do. 

He had forgotten all about sending a wire to Lady 
Meredyth, alid in the hall he was again delayed by meet- 
ing her. When she saw him she retreated toward the 
door with a rustle of silk petticoats and a little cry. 

“ Don’t come near me, Pat, on any consideration. 
I have just heard that awful child has got scarlet fever. 
For goodness’ sake, keep your side of the hall! ” 

“ All right,” said Meredyth indifferently; “ I sup- 
pose I needn’t try to be hospitable? You won’t come 
any farther?” 

“ Indeed, I won’t — not for worlds untold!” 

“ I can’t afford to offer you any inducement. I am 
not so disappointed as I might be if I wasn’t obliged 
to go out. — Spenser, bring her ladyship a chair, and 
you needn’t wait.” 

Meredyth was quite aware that his sister-in-law was 
incapable of getting herself away without innumerable 
preliminaries, and he was secretly not very sorry to put 
off Windsor for a little longer. 

“ I am not going to stay an instant,” said Lady 
Meredyth, accepting a chair at the extreme end of the 
hall. “ What are you going to do ? It’s the most dread- 
ful thing! And all the other children! I would offer 
to take them with pleasure, hut it’s impossible; there 
are a lot of people coming to me that I can’t put off. 
And, besides, the children are all sure to have it.” 

“You are most kind,” said Meredyth sweetly. 


152 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ But how you stand the life you are leading I don’t 
know. Henry, you are wasted — thrown away — as a 
pauper.” 

“ Upon my word, you’re quite right.” 

“ And with such a perfectly obvious way out of it.” 

“ There’s only one obvious way that I can see,” said 
Meredyth, “ and I can’t say that I entirely like to 
risk it.” 

“ Risk it! ” said Lady Meredyth; “ it seems to me" it 
has pretty substantial advantages.” 

“ It certainly has. But perhaps we aren’t thinking 
of the same thing? My idea was to hire assassins for 
Jack. But if you have thought of anything better, I 
don’t mind giving that up in the slightest.” 

Meredyth was talking nonsense without attending 
to what he was saying; he generally did when he talked 
to his sister-in-law at all. 

“Pooh! rubbish!” said Lady Meredyth. “Of 
course, what I mean is, why don’t you marry Alison 
Carnegie? ” 

It was the second time in half an hour that this sug- 
gestion had been made to him — that he had been made 
to realize himself a free man. 

“ I assure you she is willing enough,” said Lady 
Meredyth. 

“You flatter me,” said Meredyth stiffly; “but if 
the joke were not so utterly far-fetched, I should be 
obliged to say that you insult her .” 

“ There’s no joke about it- 
began. 


Lady Meredyth 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 153 

“ We’ll call it a joke,” said Meredyth imperturbably. 
“ And now, Judith, sorry as I am to leave you, I must 
positively be off. A pauper can’t afford to keep a han- 
som waiting.” 

He smiled, rather grimly; he had not liked to be 
called a pauper. 

Once in the hansom, he leaned 'back, after a glance 
in the little looking-glass to see that all was right with 
him, and found his expedition was not first in his 
thoughts. 

“ Why didn’t he marry Alison Carnegie? ” 

Marry her. 

Until then Meredyth had not definitely realized that 
he was a man free to marry. The children and Evelyn’s 
letters had seemed to keep his bonds so whole. 

Now his eyes were opened. 

But the idea of marrying Alison Carnegie was ab- 
surd; she was the last woman in the world he would 
think of — and yet, was she? 

Suddenly, to his complete amazement, Meredyth 
found himself colouring like a girl. 

He congratulated himself that Judith was not there 
to imagine confirmation of her ridiculous fancies — and 
Viva, too. 

But if things had been different? Meredyth’s 
thoughts built up an ideal life till the hansom stopped 
at Paddington, and he remembered his errand. 

Once or twice on the way down to Windsor he caught 
himself smiling, and found his thoughts had again 
wandered beyond his control. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


Alison was writing. She turned to greet Mere- 
dyth, holding out her hand without getting up. 

It seemed to him that he saw for the first time her 
pleasant face with its steady brown eyes, her graceful 
figure, and her long, white hands — all things he admired 
in a woman. 

He became all at once aware of a strange, sudden 
embarrassment, and to hide it elaborated his usual man- 
ner of deliberation. 

But for the first few moments he spoke with his at- 
tention half distracted from what he was saying. 

And yet yesterday’s failure had meant a good deal 
to him, and he had been wondering before he came in 
what words he should put it to Alison. 

How that he was with her he began to tell her, with 
Judith’s and Viva’s words fresher in his mind than 
anything else. It was only the slightest possible sketch 
that he gave her, passing over by instinct all he had 
found unpleasant. 

“ I tell you, Alice, I walked up and down till I saw 
a policeman eyeing me suspiciously before I plucked 
up courage to go in. Half-way across the square I met 

Farran — Bobby Farran ” 

154 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 155 

He paused, but Alison said nothing. She was begin- 
ning to be aware that his eyes sought hers with a curious 
persistency. 

“ He took me into the anteroom — there were a lot 
of them there — and offered me a whisky and soda. But 
I was determined to do the thing in style, and I asked 
for a glass of ale instead. It was pretty hot, and I could 
see they were rather Surprised. However, I drank it — 

I loathe ale — and they talked of one thing or another, 
and Heaven only knows what I said, for all the time I 
was trying to ask carelessly whose ale they took.” 

Meredyth laughed, carrying off a certain discom- 
fort. 

“ Of course I got it out in the most awkward way 
possible in the end, and then I wasn’t much forrader.’ 
I ask you, Alice, how was I to tell them their ale wasn’t 
good enough and they had better get Pimley’s? All 
very well in theory, but when it comes to the point ” 

Meredyth leaned back in his chair, and there was 
such a long pause that Alison broke it at last by a ques- 
tioning “ Well? ” 

“Well?” said Meredyth languidly, “that’s the 
whole of it. I’m not fated to sell Pimley’s ale; I can’t 
do it.” 

Alison was not much surprised; she had scarcely ex- 
pected that his new line of life would prove successful 
or even possible, and she guessed that she had not heard 
the whole story and that he had not been quite so easily 
beaten as he gave her reason to think. 

He was the last man in the world for a life which 


156 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

laid him open to possible humiliation. A less self-con- 
scious man might have found it hearable, hut he, never. 

“ So we are at a deadlock again,” he said, and after 
a pause he added: “Alice, you ought always to wear 
that dull blue; it suits you.” 

Alison laughed a little uneasily and tried to turn 
hack the conversation; when this failed she spoke of 
Vivien and scarlet fever. 

“ You got my note last night? I hope you don’t 
think my advice brutal, but infection makes scarlet 
fever such a business, and then you are complicated by 
having to leave the house at the end of the month, and 
by Johnny. A private ward is quite comfortable.” 

“ I don’t like it,” said Meredyth. 

“ But don’t you think it’s the best thing to do? You 
see there’s the risk of infection for the other children. 
I can’t ask you to send them here because of my women. 
And then there’s the expense to consider.” 

Alison ended with a slight hesitation. 

“ I will do,” said Meredyth softly, “ whatever you 
think best, Alice. I wish I had always.” 

Alison was startled, more by his tone than his words. 
She said, trying to shake off an abrupt sense of discom- 
fort: “You’re getting very polite to me in my old age, 
Henry.” 

Meredyth made no answer; he sat meditatively. 

Alison, after a moment, said: 

“ Henry, are you aware that it is nearly twelve 
o’clock, and I’ve a sheaf of proofs to correct before 
lunch? I must send you off.” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 157 

He rose at once with a few words of apology. 

“ It's good of you to bother with me,” he said; 
“ very. Don’t give me up as hopeless till I’ve had an- 
other shot, .Alice.” 

But at the door he paused to suggest, with some 
hesitation, that they might take Johnny and go to the 
Garrick some evening. 

The inconsistency was very characteristic, but the 
idea of going to the theatre was not, and Alison said so, 
rather gravely. Meredyth in return took some trouble 
to explain with elaboration that there was nothing 
going on now and no self-respecting person left in town, 
so they might just as well go as not. 

Alison said they could think about it some other 
time, but just now he had better go and see the doctor 
about Viva, and he meekly went. 

His own house was very dreary. On the landing out- 
side Viva’s room and his own the carpet was taken up, 
and from her door a damp sheet hung reeking of car- 
bolic. 

A first complaint of the nurse met him on the 
stairs from Viva’s maid, and two of the other servants, 
knowing they must leave at the end of the month, came 
to him with a request to go at once; otherwise, they said, 
they would lose their next places, as no one would take 
them direct from a house with scarlet fever in it. This 
seemed reasonable. 

Meredyth said they must wait for an hour or two 
and he would think about it, and finding Johnny 
and Milly lounging disconsolately about the house, 
11 


158 THE freedom of hexry meredyth. 

he sent them off to the doctor with a note asking him 
to call. 

Then he went into the smoking-room and tried to 
pass the time with a pipe and a paper. 

But his attention wandered woefully; halfway down 
a leading article he lost his place and discovered that the 
sense of what he was reading had not reached his 
brain. 

The power of putting troublesome thoughts out of 
his head, which had brought him comfortably through 
life, seemed to have deserted him. 

Meredyth had always avoided a disagreeable thing 
when he could, and when he could not he had forgotten 
it as soon as possible. He had unconsciously grown into 
a habit of selfishness in which nothing keenly touched 
him except as it affected himself. There had been no 
one else for him to be concerned about. Evelyn had 
taken her own way and led her own life, neither expect- 
ing nor giving sympathy; and she had been fiercely 
jealous of any advances to the children. 

The men about town he met daily were spending 
time largely as he did, and probably with more reason 
for self-reproach. Meredyth was a fastidious man and 
was not naturally passionate; his manner of living com- 
pared most favourably with that of his usual associ- 
ates. And his life had been so full of petty occupations 
and amusements that he had never had time to think. 

How time to think was forced upon him and there 
were the children to think for. 

He could see no way out of his difficulties. He was 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 159 

not seriously in debt, except in so far as any debt there 
is no prospect of paying is serious, but he was no longer 
a very young man and he had four children — besides, 
there was Evelyn. 

It was itnpossible that any one should want to marry 
him, or that he should ask any one to marry him; he 
had no right, no possible right to do so. 

But what a very comfortable difference Alison’s 
presence would make, and what a wonderfully attractive 
woman she was still! How had he failed to realize it 
before? 

Meredyth was dimly conscious of a possibility open- 
ing before him which, if he did not put it aside, but 
instead accepted it and took the risk, would end for 
ever his easy life and might bring him nothing but 
pain. 

Would it not be better, safer, easier, to shut his 
eyes? 


CHAPTER XIX. 


Vivien was moved into a private room in the hospital 
a few hours later. She made neither remark nor objec- 
tion when she read the note her father sent up to her, 
and submitted to all the nurse’s arrangements silently. 
It was Alison again, she told herself. Alison’s influence 
upon her father had been used to make him only anx- 
ious to get rid of her. She was to be sent to hospital, 
and then she would he no further trouble nor incon- 
venience, and there she might live or die as it happened 
— nobody cared. 

And she was leaving behind all her mother’s things 
to be thrown away or sold, or given to Alison. 

Vivien in hospital would not be able to prevent it, 
and she could not take anything with her because any- 
thing she touched would be infectious and must be 
burned. 

She watched her opportunity when the nurse had 
left the room, and crept out of bed and to her mother’s 
room to secure at least her diary. Perhaps she could 
later on disinfect it; if not, better it should be burned 
than left where any one could read it. 

For Vivien herself would never come back to that 
house or that room in which she had spent so much of 
160 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

lier life. She felt passionately troubled that she could 
say good-bye to nothing. 

At the last she kept a stern command over herself, 
allowing herself to look neither to the right nor to the 
left on the things she was seeing for the last time. If 
her father and Alison Carnegie had broken her heart, 
at least they should not have the satisfaction of know- 
ing it. 

When she found herself in her hospital room she 
lay with her face turned to the wall, sullenly submitting 
to be roused at short intervals for medicine and milk and 
soda. 

Well, she was out of the way now; her father need 
not feel that he was watched. 

Perhaps when she got well again it would be to 
hear that her father and Alison were married — to have 
Alison presented to her as her mother. 

Never would she consent to live with her — never; 
she would always be loyal. But it was maddening to 
be helplessly fastened there, knowing nothing of what 
might be going on. 

And Lord Maurice. 

When she came out he would have forgotten her, and 
Miss Urquhart would have found some one else to help 
her; there would be no place left for her, and no one 
who wanted her. 

Vivien lay with her face to the wall, letting slow 
tears follow each other down her cheeks, and full of self- 
pity. It was very, very hard to bear. 

Toward the evening the increasing pain in her 


162 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

throat began to confuse her thoughts. She could no 
longer take either milk or medicine, and so lay undis- 
turbed, drawing every breath with sharp agony. 

People did sometimes die of scarlet fever. 

Vivien’s vivid imagination found an odd kind of 
pleasure in picturing a deathbed scene. 

Her father would come and would he sorry for his 
neglect of her, and with her last breath she would ask 
him for a promise — not to marry Alison. 

When she was quite sure she was going to die she 
would send for Maurice, and he could not refuse to 
come. 

He would come in, hesitating and shy — Viva knew 
exactly how he looked when he was shy — and she would 
call him to her bedside, and stretch out a thin hand, 
and in her weak voice would speak to him, advising him, 
counselling him, as Miss Urquhart said young men need- 
ed counsel. A dying woman, she would tell him with a 
faint smile, had privileges. 

And as he turned away, touched and softened, her 
mother would come. 

In the midst of her sentimentality Viva’s expression 
changed, and a look that was almost joy flashed into her 
eyes as she saw her mother bending over her. 

“ Oh,” she thought, “ if my mother was there I could 
not die! ” 

She drew a great quivering breath full of long- 
ing, and with the agony it gave her she almost 
screamed. 

Then she remembered the infection; none of those 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 163 

people would come to her bedside, let her live or die. 
If she died, it would be alone with the nurse. 

As night grew to morning she lay sleepless, with 
the pain of her throat and head so intense as to dwarf 
all troubles that were not physical. Alison, her mother, 
Maurice — everthing was blotted out in a prayer for 
relief. 

She lay with her fair hair tossed over the pillow, 
her face flushed with fever, and her whole mind concen- 
trated on the effort to draw her breath carefully. 

In the morning the doctor came and said her throat 
was a bad one; he took her temperature and felt her 
pulse, and told her she was having a sharp attack. But 
he did not seem to think there was any danger of her 
dying. 

He sent her ice for her throat during the morning 
and a sleeping draught at the end of the long, vague day, 
in which nothing was clear but pain. 

It was Viva’s worst day. By the end of the week she 
was better, and a time began of weariness and beef-tea 
and milk and biscuits. 

She found the days endless. Her eyes were natu- 
rally weak, and her illness had affected them so that 
she could not read, and when the nurse volunteered to 
read to her, her cockney pronunciation proved madden- 
ing. Driven to despair, she would have worked or 
knitted had it not been for the infection; as she got bet- 
ter she would have given worlds for her fiddle. 

She spent most of her time tossing restlessly about 
and trying not to think. 


104 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

Once she had a relapse, owing to over-indulgence 
in a feast consisting of a slice of fish and a biscuit. 

The days were only marked by the frequency with 
which she had something to take. 

Several times Alison wrote to her, and so did Mere- 
dyth and the children; they sent her books and flowers, 
and later on fruit. 

But it seemed to Vivien their letters only increased 
her loneliness; they made her feel that the world was 
going on for other people though it had stopped so en- 
tirely for her. 

Nobody missed her, nobody wanted her. 

The loneliness weighed her down and conquered all 
her efforts to fight against it. 


CHAPTEK XX. 


“ Oh,” said Meredyth in a tone of distant disap- 
pointment, “are you going out?” 

The question was rather superfluous; Alison was 
coming down the steps of her house, and Meredyth, 
rounding a corner with his usual deliberation, found 
himself face to face with her. 

It was a regular close, glaring London day, and 
Meredyth’s correct tall hat and frock coat looked very 
hot and unsuitable. Alison, in her cool summer dress, 
had a woman’s advantage over him. 

She stopped and stood hesitating for a moment. 

“ I was going out,” she said, “ and perhaps, if you 
don’t mind, Henry, I had better go on.” 

“ But I do mind. Considering the energy I have ex- 
pended in getting to this God-forsaken spot, it’s rather 
heartless of you coolly to propose to send me back 
again.” 

Meredyth, as usual, now wanted to see Alison much 
more than he had done before. 

“ If you have anything particular to say ” she 

began. 

“I have, Alice; most particular.” 

“ Well, then, come in,” said Alison, turning back. 

165 


166 THE freedom of henky meredyth. 

But once in the house, Meredyth did not seem in any 
hurry to speak. 

Alison laid down her sunshade and began to draw 
off one of her gloves; after a moment she changed her 
mind and drew it on again, as a hint that she had not 
come back for long. 

“Well, Henry?” she said, “don’t think me rude, 
but I can’t stay long.” 

“ And, after all,” said Meredyth, “ what I wanted to 
tell you only concerns me, and you must be about sick 
of my concerns.” 

“Nothing that concerns you — or Jack — can possi- 
bly be uninteresting to me,” said Alison; then, conscious 
of her faint hesitation after Henry’s name, she added 
quietly, “ perhaps you, even more than J ack.” 

She had spoken quite easily, telling herself that any 
embarrassment in a friendship between a woman of her 
age and a man of Meredyth’ s, who had known each other 
all their lives, would be absurd, and she was dismayed to 
find herself unexpectedly colouring under the look which 
was his only answer. 

“ I’ve had a letter from Jack,” said Meredyth sud- 
denly; “ that’s what I came to tell you. He’s made me 
an offer — a sort of offer.” 

“ I am very glad.” 

“ Wait till you hear what it is. You know about the 
hotel he’s started on his Irish property with the idea of 
working up the country?” 

Alison nodded. 

“ Well, you may or may not know he’s got a big 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTII. 167 

farm within a few miles; he breeds horses and every- 
thing else, and has farming lectures and a county farm- 
ing society. He works on the lines of the agricultural 
society and has great ideas about improving the breeds 
of animals through the county. At the same time he 
wants to make it pay — trust Jack for that.” 

“ And why not? ” 

“ How I come to the point. He wants me to live in 
the hotel and act as general superintendent, and espe- 
cially as organizer of all picnics and amusements — pic- 
nics, Alice, pity me! In the winter and at the dead 
season, and whenever I have time, in fact, Fm to over- 
see the farm and keep it up to the mark. For this he 
offers me four hundred pounds a year to begin with.” 

Alison turned a face of consideration to him. 

“ You would like it? ” she said. 

“ I don’t know. Can you imagine me in Ireland — do 
the natives wear clothes or skins there? But the point 
is, is he offering me charity? Can I he worth the mu- 
nificent salary he offers?” 

“ I should fancy you could easily he worth more,” 
said Alison. “ You know about horses, and a trust- 
worthy person on the spot is a great thing.” 

“ Well, Alice, shall I take it?” said Meredyth in a 
low voice. 

“ How can I decide that for you? ” 

“ I wish you to decide.” 

Alison was quite sure now, as she had been for some 
time almost sure, that the change in Meredyth was not 
only in her imagination. 


168 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

She had heard rumours of rumours from more 
sources than one, and knew that other people besides 
herself had found something to notice. 

It was this that brought her to face it a little later 
on when Meredyth, rising to go, asked if he should find 
her at home the next day. 

“ Henry,” she said, “ I don’t see the use of beating 
about the bush between such old friends as we are, so 
I’ll tell you plainly I would rather you didn’t come.” 

“ There’s nothing like plain speaking,” said Mere- 
dyth with sudden stiffness. 

“ One might naturally think,” Alison went on, col- 
ouring faintly, “ that at my age and under the special 
circumstances we might be friends if we chose. But it 
isn’t so. You’ll laugh at the idea of people talking 
about a middle-aged, settled-down person like myself; 
but though it’s ridiculous I don’t choose that they 
should talk.” 

Meredyth did not look as if he wanted to laugh, 
neither did he look surprised. 

He considered Alison very gravely in a silence which 
covered a certain gratification. 

Then he turned a little from her, took up a bowl 
of roses from the table, and began carefully to pull leaves 
off one flower after another. 

“ And so,” said Alison, “ don’t be offended, Henry, • 
if I ask you not to come so often.” 

Meredyth made no answer. Presently he said with 
a short laugh: 

“ Of course it’s absurd. A fellow without anything, 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 169 

and — and particularly a man divorced from his wife, is 
surely hopelessly out of the running.” 

“ Surely,” said Alison steadily; “ and at our age 
people can be friends without the remotest danger of 
their falling in love.” 

“ But I suppose,” said Meredyth, “ sometimes they 
may find out they have been in love all their lives — or 
one of them has — without knowing it.” 

He was not quite sure how much he meant of what 
he was saying, hut the temptation, so to speak, was upon 
him. 

“ I suppose, Alice,” he said, “ you think a man who 
has divorced his wife ought never to marry ? ” 

A memory of Vivien’s anxious little face when she 
had asked the same question flashed into Alison’s head. 
How it came from Meredyth, as his daughter had feared 
it would come. 

Alison could not find an answer. She tried for one 
in which, without sternly generalizing, she could make 
clear her personal distaste. The knowledge that Mere- 
dyth would misconstrue her silence made her still more 
anxious. 

“ I suppose,” he said in a careless voice, “ that you, 
for instance, wouldn’t marry a divorced man?” 

He asked the question with an air of indifference 
so elaborate as to defeat itself. He was not quite sure 
that he cared what answer Alison might give; he certain- 
ly was not going to let her imagine that he cared. 

But he had grown curious as to her attitude toward 
him. So he pulled a rose to pieces and asked her the 


170 THE feeedom of heney meeedyth. 

question, following it by a quick furtive glance at her 
face. 

“No,” said Alison, “I don’t think I would. Nor, 
for that matter, any other man.” 

She laughed uncertainly. 

“ And I daresay you don’t think I would he a very 
successful sort of fellow to marry? ” 

“ I don’t think you would.” 

“ And yet,” said Meredyth, “ once we were very near 
being married.” 

He knew that his speech was unfair; he spoke, urged 
by hurt vanity at her answer. 

It was the first time for many and many a long 
year that any one had alluded to that broken engage- 
ment, and he saw a quick pain in Alison’s eyes with a 
certain inexcusable satisfaction. 

“ That was a lifetime ago,” said Alison. “ I dare say 
I was very different then, and I know you were — very, 
very different.” 

Meredyth coloured, and answered very shortly. 

“ So, on the whole,” he said, “ it’s just as well that 
I don’t want to be married.” 

Then he got up and said good-bye, indignant with 
himself and with Alison. 

“ It only proves what an utter fool Judith is,” he 
told himself; and added viciously : “ Changed — I 
should think she has changed! — and not for the bet- 
ter.” 


PART II. 


CHAPTER I. 

“May I ask, Meredyth, if you are going to adopt 
Vivien as well as Johnny? ” 

Lady Meredyth spoke in a low voice, with a glance 
at Vivien, who was sitting in a low window seat at the 
other end of the room with her violin. She had been 
playing for some of her aunt’s afternoon visitors, and 
she was still a little flushed with the excitement and 
pleasure her playing always brought her. She bent her 
pretty, fair head over the violin, and sometimes drew 
her bow softly across the strings. 

Lord Meredyth roused himself from his paper with a 
start. 

“My dear Judith, who said anything about adopt- 
ing? With Johnny I have duties. I am very anxious 
that he should grow up to take an interest in Mere- 
vale.” 

“Johnny is conceded. But Vivien! It was all very 
well at Merevale, but now in town, with Henry gone off „ 
to play the giddy goat in Ireland instead of marrying 
Alison Carnegie like a sensible man ” 

Meredyth said “What nonsense!” rather loudly, 
171 


172 TH E FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

but Vivien had begun to play to herself and covered his 
voice. 

“ Oh, I know you can be as blind as a bat when you 
choose, my dear. But everybody knows he has only to 
give a hint, or take one. However, he prefers to live on 
charity.” 

Lord Meredyth made an impatient movement. 

“ There’s no question of charity. If Henry had not 
gone to Ireland I should have had to send somebody 
else.” 

“ All the same you have done very well for a good 
many years without anybody.” 

“ It’s just because I haven’t done as well as I wish 
that I am making a change. There’s not much point in 
discussing what’s done, is there? ” 

Meredyth spoke decidedly, with a certain mixture 
of annoyance and amusement in his voice, and his wife 
understood him better than to pursue the subject. 

After a short pause she returned to the part of the 
subject which really interested her. 

“ But Vivien. If I am to take her to a Drawing- 
room she will want dresses and so on. She’s not a girl 
who gets on well. If that young Sassoon is really going 
to marry her it’s all very well. But I am afraid his head 
is too full of socialistic rubbish; he’d rather marry his 
washerwoman’s daughter or one of his match girls.” 

“ He and Viva seemed to get on uncommonly well at 
Merevale ” 

“ Well, if he means to marry her I wish he would 
hurry up. He is a much better match than she has any 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 173 

right to expect. Only an oddity would marry a girl 
without a penny and with no particular attractions. 
But he talks to her about the East End and — Lord help 
us! — the return of the Jews! In the meantime I am 
about tired of Vivien — underhand little monkey!” 

“ But is she underhand? ” 

“IBs quite obvious how little you have to do with 
her. Why, she does nothing openly — nothing. I do 
think it’s a little too much that we should have to take 
the whole family on our shoulders! ” 

Lord Meredyth laid down his paper and looked at 
her gravely. 

“Judith,” he said, “there’s this we must consider: 
My life is all there is between Henry and everything he 
wants.” 

“ Jack!” 

“ We must realize that; you may he sure that he 
does.” 

“ But your life is a better one than his,” said Lady 
Meredyth quickly. 

“I think it is. I think it is unlikely that he will 
ever succeed. But we must consider the possibility. 
There, Judith, we’ll say no more about it; don’t he 
vexed.” 

He left the subject with a suppressed sigh. It was 
one never mentioned between them, and touched the 
bitterest disappointment of Meredyth’s life. 

On her distant window seat Vivien had heard no- 
thing. On another day her quick self-consciousness 
might have made her suspicious, but this afternoon she 
12 


174 • THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

had too many and too exciting thoughts to fill her mind. 
Her own concerns absorbed her, and she had dreams 
which made her pale-blue eyes shine and her lips quiver. 

Vivien had grown into a very pretty girl. The months 
which had changed the summer of one year into the 
early spring of the next had changed her too. She 
had developed and grown a shade taller; her face and 
figure had lost their angularity, and she had learned to 
dress and a new way of doing her pretty, fair hair. 

Her manner had grown more equal and assured — 
perhaps too assured. An autumn at Merevale under her 
aunt’s careless chaperonage had not gone for nothing. 

There was a hard look in Viva’s eyes which was not 
pleasant, and her manner was instinctively defiant. 

But she was very pretty and sometimes amusing, 
though she had not entirely abandoned the youthful 
trick of snubbing men with smart speeches and expect- 
ing them to like it. 

Still she was becoming sufficiently attractive to 
arouse Lady Meredyth’s jealousy, a jealousy which never 
failed to resent any attention paid to a young girl in her 
presence. 

That afternoon some of Lady Meredyth’s own par- 
ticular knights had bestowed quite too much considera- 
tion on Viva and her violin. 

So it was obviously high time for Viva to go to 
Ireland. 


CHAPTER II. 


“ . . . My dearest child, I am pining for a sight 
of you. Now that there are only streets between us, it 
seems worse to he separated. Viva, if you have any love 
and pity left for your mother, if my enemies have not 
destroyed all feeling for me in my child’s heart, come to 
me. I am a very miserable woman. I could never 
make you understand what I have suffered. Darling, 
don’t take away the last comfort in my miserable life by 
refusing to come to me! . . 

The letter wandered on into several sheets. 

When Vivien had first got it, it had brought her only 
the completest joy — joy at the prospect of seeing her 
mother, joy in feeling that somebody wanted her, that 
there was somebody to whom she was not simply an 
encumbrance. The complaints of misery did not trou- 
ble her much; she was used to her mother’s use of ex- 
aggerated terms. 

She had counted the hours which separated her from 
the meeting with feverish impatience, utterly incapable 
of drawing her thoughts from it for one moment. She 
had lived in a dream, treasuring her secret. 

It was only when the longed-for afternoon itself 
came .that any misgivings came with it. 

175 


176 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

It was not that there were any difficulties about keep- 
ing the appointment. Vivien was a good deal left to her- 
self; Lady Meredyth had her own engagements, and 
found the fact that Viva had not as yet been presented 
an excellent reason for leaving her at home. Viva had 
resented being sent back into childhood, but now she 
had reason to be glad. 

It was not, either, that any misgivings about the 
right or wrong of what she was going to do troubled 
her. Vivien did not care; right or wrong, she said to 
herself, nothing should stop her. 

But the small details were unpleasant. 

Vivien knew the house she was going to very well; 
she had often been there with her mother, and she had 
often met Major Arkwright-Gage. 

She felt dimly that her mother might better have ap- 
pointed some other place of meeting. 

Then, as she drove through the streets, it troubled 
her how she was to ask for her mother, and the fear of 
meeting Major Arkwright-Gage possessed her. 

When she got out of the hansom she was shaking 
from head to foot, and for a moment her voice was 
gone. 

She said “ I think I am expected ” in such a low 
voice that she had to repeat her words. 

Then there were a few moments during which she 
was too deaf and blind with excitement to know what 
was happening. 

Only she was with her mother once more — her mo- 
ther, looking, Viva thought, prettier and sweeter than 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 177 

ever. In the first moment she felt the long-dreamed- 
of meeting to be all she had hoped for. 

It was only later on, when she and her mother sat 
side by side, hand touching hand, that she became con- 
scious of a vague, increasing sense of disappointment. 
The year’s separation, being what it was, had placed an 
impalpable but strong barrier between them. 

There was so much they could not speak of; Vivien 
found herself carefully choosing her words. 

“ My dearest child, how much we have to say to each 
other! ” said Mrs.Meredyth; but nevertheless their words 
flagged, with uncomfortable pauses. 

Vivien found herself studying her mother for the 
first time in her life with critical eyes. 

She was a decidedly pretty woman — a woman made 
up so skilfully that the nearest observer was held in 
doubt. She had small, regular features, and had once 
had a very pretty complexion. Now it was a trifle hard 
and fixed, and there were lines under her eyes and at 
the corners of her pretty, drooping mouth which would 
not be entirely hidden. 

Vivien found herself looking at her in a curious 
way, as if she was seeing her for the first time. 

She was glad that the room was one in which she 
had never been before — a small, cosy place, a mixture 
of sitting- and writing-room. 

Mrs. Meredyth half lay, half sat on a sofa in front 
of the fire; she was a woman who had too much respect 
for her clothes and her hair ever to make herself tho- 
roughly comfortable on a sofa. 


178 THE feeedom of henry meredyth. 

Vivien sat close beside her, her face glowing with 
excitement and the flame of the fire. 

It was what Vivien had dreamed of again and again, 
and just the place for confidences. But she found her- 
self struggling with commonplace remarks to cover 
silences. 

“And you are with Judith? She was always my 
enemy. Viva, dearest, I am sure she has tried to poison 
your mind against me. Is your love for me gone? ” 

Vivien was just at the age to he made as uncom- 
fortable as a boy by sentiment. But from her mother 
she had always been used to it. 

She said eagerly: “ Of course, mamma, you know it 
isn’t.” 

Mrs. Meredyth sighed. 

“ Don’t let them make you cruel to me, Viva,” she 
said; “ your love is the one thing I have got left out of 
the wreck of my life. I am very, very miserable. Dar- 
ling, I am terribly lonely. From morning to night I am 
by myself, often. You can’t think how I miss jmu! 
how I sit here and wonder and long for my children! ” 

Eager words of love and comfort rose to Vivien’s 
lips. Might she stay with her mother? Might she stay, 
now, and never go back to be an unwelcome burden to 
other people? She would devote every minute to mak- 
ing her mother happy. 

But her eyes fell on the stem of the pipe, carelessly 
thrown on the mantleshelf, and she was suddenly 
silent. 

“ I am a miserable woman,” Mrs. Meredyth said. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 179 

shedding a few tears. “ I married so young, before I 
knew what I was doing, and everything has been against 
me. Vivien, I must tell you what I can tell no one else: 
I may he left penniless any day. And that isn’t the 
worst. 0 Viva, you don’t know how cruelly I am 
treated — how much I have to suffer! Sometimes I feel 
as if I should he driven to end my wretched life. Come 
and see me often, my pet; it is my only comfort.” 

“ I am so sorry,” said Vivien, in a voice sharp with 
pain. 

She felt herself unresponsive, although her heart 
ached with pity and pain. But the cause and the man 
that made her mother suffer could not be mentioned 
between them, and the knowledge crippled her speech. 

“And now I must send you away. What a happy 
time this has been, darling! Have you grown taller, or 
is it your long dresses ? How sweet you look, my precious 
child, and how I wish I could keep you longer! But we 
are going to the Haymarket to-night, and we are dining 
early.” 

The “ we ” froze Viva’s farewell words in spite of 
all her efforts to he loving and natural. 

Her mother came to the room door and kissed her 
warmly, and waved her hand to her at every turn of the 
stairs. 

While the footman was getting her cloak in the hall 
and Viva was waiting in an agony of impatience the hall 
door suddenly opened with a latchkey, and a stout, hand- 
some man, with rather a red face, came in. 

Vivien knew him at once. She grew very white, 


180 THE feeedom of heney meeedyth. 

and pulled her cloak roughly round her, moving toward 
the door without waiting to fasten it. 

Major Arkwright-Gage, on his part, reddened and 
drew hack, half doubtfully. He would, perhaps, have 
spoken if Viva had not turned an absolutely unseeing 
glance on him as she passed. 

The door closed heavily behind her, and the episode 
was over. 

But in her room that night she wept the bitterest, 
most hopeless tears she had ever shed in her life. 

She did not ask herself or try to realize why she 
felt more forlorn, more acutely miserable than she had 
ever felt. 


CHAPTER III. 


“ Miss Meredyth, how fearfully late you are! Peo- 
ple have come and people have gone; men, women, and 
children have been here to ask for help and to offer it, 
to give information, and to get it, and, their business 
done, they have gone and others have come in their 
places. And still I have sat here, kicking my heels 
and waiting for you.” 

Abram Sassoon had had the upper room of the 
Church Organization Society office practically to him- 
self for the last half hour, and had found the time hang 
heavily. 

“ Fve written part of an immortal work on the hacks 
of all the relief forms I could find, and I should fancy 
it’s imprisonment for life at the least if Pm found out. 
And it’s all your fault, Miss Meredyth. Surely a lady’s 
license stops at keeping a fellow two hours waiting! ” 

“ I am very sorry,” said Vivien with unexpected 
meekness, and something in her voice made Sassoon’s 
expression change; “ and I can’t even go to Quin’s with 
you after all. I was very nearly not coming at all, and 
then I thought I should like to — for the last time.” 

“ The last time! ” Sassoon echoed. 

“ I am going to Ireland to-day.” 

181 


182 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


“ Oh, I say ! ” 

Sassoon’s face fell with flattering promptitude. 

“And you won’t be at Lord’s to-morrow?” 

Vivien shook her head. 

“ Nor down here for the music class on Monday? ” 

“ Of course not.” 

“ I say, what a horrid nuisance! ” 

They stood silently facing each other across the 
table, which Sassoon had made untidy. 

Presently he said with some hesitation: 

“ Will you say I’m cheeky, Miss Meredyth, if I ask 
if there’s anything wrong? ” 

“ There’s everything wrong,” said Viva tragically. 

She looked at Sassoon, who met her eyes with his, 
full of sympathy. 

“ I’ll tell you,” she said suddenly, “ not that you 
can help me — nobody can. Aunt Judith has found 
out that I go to see — my mother. And she says that 
unless I promise never to go again I must leave her 
house.” 

The place was not a good one for confidences. A 
curate came in, cutting short Vivien’s speech and in 
eager pursuit of the papers of a man named White, 
whose reference could not be discovered. Of course the 
papers were at the very bottom of a basketful, and then 
Sassoon was appealed to for information about some 
meeting. 

Vivien sat down and gave her attention to a direc- 
tory. 

“ My dear fellow, ask McCrae,” said Sassoon impa- 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 133 

tently; “ he’s downstairs, and is much better up in the 
details than I am. I might put you wrong. And you’d 
better hurry up, for he’s going round with pensions later 
on. Here’s your hat, and don’t forget .your papers.” 

The curate was almost hustled out of the room, and 
Sassoon turned to Viva, hot with sympathy. 

“ And is Lady Meredyth turning you out? ” he said. 

“I am not waiting to he turned out,” said Viva 
proudly. 

“ It’s very hard luck,” Sassoon began, and then 
somebody came in to consult a directory. 

When they had the room to themselves again Sas- 
soon said: 

“ You must go to Miss Carnegie. She will settle it 
all.” 

Vivien interrupted him passionately. 

“ To Alison — never ! Mr. Sassoon, you don’t under- 
stand, but that is totally impossible. Alison is the last 
person! ” 

“ I certainly don’t understand,” said Sassoon, with 
sudden stiffness. 

“ But don’t be offended with me, please,” said Viva, 
with the meekness of despair; "if you turn against me 
there is no one.” 

It was her tone more than her words which mollified 
Sassoon immediately, helped by a certain amount of 
flattered vanity. 

A mention of Alison, whose name rose readily to Sas- 
soon’s lips, meant always that they jarred with each 
other and interrupted their friendliness. 


184 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ I think you are making a mistake,” he said, “ but, 
of course, I’ll do anything I can for you. If you must 
go, who is going with you? ” 

“ Nobody,” said Vivien; “ I am going alone.” 

“ I don’t like it at all,” said Sassoon discontentedly; 
“ it’s not even like travelling about England. But going 
to Ireland — look here. Miss Meredyth, what would you 
say to my going with you — at least as far as Belfast? 
I’ve never been to Ireland, and I don’t like your going 
by yourself. I could look after you a bit.” 

“And have everybody saying that we had eloped,” 
said Vivian with a sudden laugh. “ No, thank you, Mr. 
Sassoon.” 

“ It’s a great pity,” he said meditatively, “ that I’m 
not married.” 

“ I don’t think,” said Vivien, “ that that would 
make it any better.” 

“ What I meant was that you could have come to 
stay with me. But at any rate, Miss Meredyth, I’ll come 
to Euston with you. I’ll wire to O’Neil to get some one 
to do my district — there’s not much to do this afternoon 
as it happens — only some cricket business. Miss Mere- 
dyth, it’s a horrid shame; I shall miss you dreadfully.” 

“ I hope you will,” said Viva; “ it isn’t nice to think 
that nobody will miss me.” 

“ Of course I shall,” said Sassoon; “ and I’ll tell you 
what, I’ll come over and see you in Ireland if I may. 
I’ll come and fish and play golf and stay at the hotel.” 

“ Will you really? ” said Vivien breathlessly. 

“ Certainly I will. You’ll show me round, won’t 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 185 

you? and I ? ll teach you golf. It will he awfully 
jolly.” 

Sassoon and Vivien began to enjoy the episode, Sas- 
soon without an afterthought, and Viva with many 
satisfactory recollections of how little her aunt knew of 
her proceedings. 

They went up to the city on the top of an omnibus 
and lunched there, and Viva felt delightfully dissipated 
and wicked. 

Further crimes were prevented by the necessity of 
securing her belongings in time for the train. This was 
successfully accomplished. 

Lady Meredyth was out, and Viva secured a footman 
and had her boxes, already packed, safely brought down 
to the cab. The footman was probably surprised at their 
casual proceedings, especially as Viva gave him a mes- 
sage with the air of an afterthought: 

“ Oh, Robinson, tell her ladyship that I won’t he 
in to dinner; I’ve gone to Ireland.” 

The rest was easy. 

They drove to Euston in plenty of time, and Sassoon 
provided Viva with everything she possibly could or 
could not want on her journey, and got her a carriage 
to herself. 

He stood on the step and talked to her with the usual 
jerky words of farewell. 

“ It’s awfully good of you to let me see you off. But 
I wish I could go with you.” 

“I wish you could,” said Viva, with some sinking 
of heart. 


136 THE FREEDOM of henry meredyth. 


“ And I wish Miss Carnegie but there, I mustn’t 

talk about that. Are you sure there is nothing else I 
can get you? ” 

“ Nothing, thank you.” 

“ And, I say, may I write and tell you how we are 
getting on down East?” 

Sassoon was very sorry for her — so sorry that his in- 
terest had flamed up, and he wanted to say something 
to make her feel less lonely. 

“ Don’t forget,” he said, “ that I am coming to see 
you in a month or two.” 

Viva nodded, and smiled rather forlornly. They had 
seen a good deal of each other during the past winter at 
Merevale and elsewhere, and this odd day together 
seemed to have advanced their friendship with a leap. 

It was a day of possibilities and sudden impulses; 
anything — a' word, a look — might have changed their 
whole lives. 

Very little more would have induced a young man 
not accustomed to deny himself to jump into the car- 
riage and go off to Ireland without so much as a tooth- 
brush. i 

But a porter told him to stand back just at the right 
moment, and Viva made no further reference to her 
loneliness. 

The sudden possibility was gone for ever. 

He only took her hand firmly in his and looked at 
her eagerly as the train began to move. 

“ Don’t let any other fellow teach you golf,” he said. 


CHAPTER IV. 


“ So you have arrived ! 99 said Meredyth. 

He had sauntered down the pier as the ferryboat 
came in, and been in time to greet Vivien as she landed 
and accept a perfunctory kiss. 

Vivien was dusty . and dirty and tired. She felt 
as if she had been travelling for years, though it was 
really not quite twenty-four hours since she had bidden 
good-bye to Abram Sassoon at Euston. 

But she had had so many changes and stoppages and 
waits here and there, and, never having been on the sea 
before, she had not been able to sleep during her night 
crossing from Liverpool to Belfast. 

Since her landing she had a vague general impres- 
sion of short, slow journeys and long waits, ending in 
this ferryboat crossing, which Viva, with the Slanamul- 
lagh coach pointed out to her on the other side, had 
found the most wearisome of all. 

How, all at once, something in the coldness and in- 
difference of her father’s greeting made her wish the 
end of her journey farther off. 

Meredyth was dressed with as careful a consideration 
of suitability as he had ever been in town. He looked 
very young to be the father of a girl like Viva, and very 
187 


188 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

smart and pleasant to look upon. But she had never felt 
the barrier between them more keenly. 

“ HI send a man to see to your boxes,” her father 
said; “ I suppose your name is on them? ” 

“ Yes,” said Viva. “ Father, I couldn’t help coming. 
I really couldn’t.” 

“ However that may be, here you are,” said Mere- 
dyth, “ and you have twenty-four miles to drive still.” 

Vivien stiffened to defiance at his tone. 

“ I should not have come if I could have helped it.” 

“ Well, as for that, I suppose your Uncle Jack would 
have kept you, or Alison Carnegie.” 

“ Oh, I know,” said Viva, in a hard voice, “ even 
without your telling me so plainly, that you don’t want 
me. But nobody else wants me either, so I don’t see 
what I could do but come here or drown myself.” 

“ Pooh, my dear child! You don’t expect me to be 
blowing paeans of joy when you have upset all my ar- 
rangements for you and sent me a telegram which cost 
me sixteen shillings. And as to not helping it, I sup- 
pose you wanted to come, and you came. You have the 
family tendency to do what you like. — Is the luggage all 
in, O’Hara?” 

Vivien made no answer. She could not trust her 
voice sufficiently to answer, and she drew her lips tightly 
together. 

She told herself passionately that she hated her fa- 
ther, and wished she was dead. 

She let herself be helped to her seat on the coach in 
silence. Two elderly married couples were the only 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 1§9 

other people going, and their luggage and Vivien’s was 
soon in. 

Then Meredyth, paying no further attention to his 
daughter, mounted the box, and in a moment they 
were off. 

It was a long drive. Vivien, lost in self-pity, paid 
very little attention to her surroundings. She had 
an impression of fields and bogs and a background 
of heather-covered mountains. Now and then, as they 
rounded a turn, there was a glimpse of inputting sea; 
once they got so close that from her high seat she could 
look down a stretch of cliff on white-tossing waves be- 
low. Afterwards they turned hack into the country and 
drove between fields where cattle grazed, and others 
where the crop was being put in. More curious than 
the cattle, who were too much used to the coach to do 
more than raise their heads lazily for a moment, the 
people always stopped to stare, standing with bare 
legs and clothes kilted to the knee in the brown fur- 
rows. 

Vivien, her thoughts far away, leaned back in her 
seat and drew her cloak round her closely to keep off 
the hitter gusts of wind. 

Meredyth spoke to her once or twice, and always 
when they changed horses, which was three times. The 
last time a pair of heavily made, strong animals were 
harnessed, and the final two miles of the drive was 
through loose, thick sand, with sand hills and sea on 
either side. 

Once, the tide being high, they drove splashing 
13 


190 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

across a bay, where the water broke in little waves 
against the wheels of the coach. 

When they reached dry sand once more the hotel 
was in sight, and their way was dotted with small boys, 
anxiously looking out for the arrival of golfers. The 
sight of a set of clubs belonging to one of the elderly 
couples aroused much enthusiasm and rivalry. 

Vivien heaved a sigh of relief at sight of the hotel. 

The house had not been a large one. In the Mere- 
dyths’ father’s time it had been let to various people 
who had successively tried and failed to make a fortune 
out of it. For the last ten years Lord Meredyth had 
taken it into his own hands, and had been better able to 
afford finding it, as he had found it, a loss. 

He was now trying to work on a larger scale. A sec- 
ond wing, little smaller than the rest of the house, was 
finished, except in one corner, where a scaffolding still 
stood; he had improved the coach and started a steam 
launch, and brought over a wooden billiard room and 
covered tennis court from Norway. 

As a result, the hotel straggled a good deal, and 
looked wide and unwieldy, especially where two cov- 
ered passages connected it with the billiard room and 
tennis court and some baths. 

It stood all alone, with a shelter of sand hills which 
blotted out all view, except from upper windows, but 
was quite necessary in winter. 

A broad veranda stretched along the whole front 
of the hotel, and various stray people were lounging 
about it, most of them having tea or waiting for it. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. qqq 

A group of golfers, conspicuous in their bright-red 
coats, had just come in, and their caddies, a picturesque 
trio of shock-headed, bare-legged boys, were polishing 
their clubs. Three old ladies on easy chairs knitted 
and gossiped. A girl in a blue blouse leaned over the 
veranda railing and talked to a couple of men with 
fishing rods. 

But everybody turned to look at the coach as it 
drove up. 

When Meredyth got down and threw the reins to a 
groom there was a general movement in his direction; 
everybody seemed to want something. 

“ Is my cleek finished, Mr. Meredyth? Have you got 
it?” 

“ Do you mean to say my bicycle • hasn’t come? 
Why it is nearly a week since I wrote for it; are you 
sure? ” 

“ Mr. Meredyth, what time does the coach start for 
Bellcoe Bay to-morrow?” • 

“Mr. Meredyth, may we dance to-night?” 

Viva stood a little aside, intensely conscious of being 
stared at and studied with interest as a newcomer. 

She almost admired the calm way her father passed 
on, with answers which were slight but always polite. 

He dismissed his daughter with equal civility and 
promptitude on the first opportunity. Jossy, when he 
came rushing eagerly to meet her, was pressed in the 
service. Meredyth, with a few words, suggested that he 
should take his sister to her room, and himself saun- 
tered off to the billiard room. 


192 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

He was not pleased to see Vivien, and he had no 
desire to pretend that he was. 

Why had she not been content to stay with the Mere- 
dyths and make herself happy there? A girl with the 
smallest modicnmof sense would have made up her mind 
to endure Judith; hut the least opposition sent Vivien 
off at a tangent. ' 

Well, it was very unlikely she would ever be asked 
to -the Meredyths again now; she would probably find 
reason to regret her present proceedings. Her father 
already found reason to regret them. 

With*Milly at school, the responsibility of Jossy had 
been very light, and Meredyth had found the child a 
pleasure. 

But Vivien as a charge promised to be another mat- 
ter. Unmanageable at home, she was sure to be much 
more unmanageable in the greater freedom of hotel life. 

There seemed something absurd, too, in collecting 
his family round him. Little Jossy was one thing; a 
grown-up daughter was quite another. 

The inevitable rubs and disagreeables of his present 
life, easily borne alone, would be a thousand times in- 
tensified under Vivien’s unfriendly eyes. 

And the life would be so bad for her. 

Meredyth honestly believed this to be the chief rea- 
son for his annoyance, pressing the others to the back- 
ground of his mind. 


CHAPTER Y. 


“ Jossy, how often have I to tell yon not to be so 
rough? ” 

Vivien had got up late, and established herself in a 
comfortable corner of the veranda with a hook. But 
her thoughts were quite elsewhere; she had read the 
same sentence over five or six times with utter want of 
comprehension. 

Close beside her a group of old ladies were knitting 
and gossiping, exactly as they had been knitting and 
gossiping when she arrived the evening before, and at 
the other end of the veranda a very promising flirtation 
was progressing. 

Everybody else was out, pursuing some form of 
amusement. The red coats of the golfers made little 
patches of colour all over the sand hills. 

Vivien, too tired after her journey and too depressed 
to be energetic, was dreamily thinking of the East End 
and Sassoon, and resented being jerked back to reality 
by J'ossy. 

“ How often have I told you not to be so rough? ” 
she said tartly, drawing her dress away from the little 
boy’s eager clasp. 

His small, plain face fell; he stood hesitating. 

193 


194 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ I am very sorry, Viva; I forgot. I wanted to show 
you something.” 

“And what on earth have you got on? Why, it’s 
Milly’s old red-flannel dressing jacket!” 

J ossy grew vividly crimson. 

“ It’s for golf, Viva. I had no red coat, and Mrs. 
Packenham said no one would know.” 

“ Jossy! A hoy of your age might have more sense! 
Go up to your room and take the ridiculous thing off 
directly.” 

Jossy was quite overwhelmed. He looked at his 
sister for a moment with crimson face, and hot, shamed 
tears in his eyes; then he flung away passionately. 

“ I am sorry you have come — you nasty, selfish, ugly 
thing! ” 

“ Don’t he silly,” said Yiva impatiently. She was 
annoyed with herself and with him, and his words hurt 
her. 

One of the old ladies turned and spoke to her doubt- 
fully. 

“Poor little fellow! He was so pleased with his 
red coat! ” she said. 

“ He is a very naughty hoy,” said Yivien stiffly. 

How dared a vulgar old woman with a crooked cap 
and an inch of wrinkled stocking showing below her 
dress — how dared she reprove her? 

But the old lady merely thought she was shy. 

“ You look very dull, my dear. You ought to he 
out with the rest. I wonder could we not find some one 
to play golf with you.” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 195 

“ I don’t play golf. I prefer to read, thank you.” 

A very stout lady stopped Viva’s return to her 
book by assuring her that she would take to golf before 
she had been long at Slanamullagh. 

“ I don’t think so,” said Viva. 

“ But I am sure of it,” said the old lady. 

“ Of course,” her first friend chimed in, “ you have 
only just arrived. How glad your father must be to 
have you! ” 

Glad! Viva felt a pang of quick self-pity. She gave 
a short laugh. 

“ It’s lonely for him. Of course the little boy is not 
a companion like you. Has your mother been dead long, 
my dear? ” 

It was absolutely the first time Vivien had heard an 
allusion to her mother. At home the people had all 
known more about it than she did herself, and circled 
carefully round a mention of her name. 

It came upon Viva like a shock, and she started and 
coloured. 

“ My mother is not dead,” she said roughly. 

In the surprise, almost amounting to consternation, 
caused by her words she made rather an awkward es- 
cape. 

She put on her hat and wandered aimlessly out of 
the hotel and over the sand hills. She told herself she 
wanted to be alone, aching all the time for some one to 
speak to. But she was braced against the world, antici- 
pating dislike and unkindness and hastening to discover 
and resent it. 


196 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


Nobody liked or wanted her, and she would want and 
like no one. 

She would not admit to herself that she was begin- 
ning to find the world a hard thing to fight — too hard 
for a cross, sore-hearted little girl of eighteen. 

As she reached the top of the sand hills she came into 
a fresher air. The breeze blew her serge dress, twisting 
it round her. She had to hold on her hat and struggle 
against it, finding, in spite of herself, a certain pleasure 
in the effort. 

At the end of her climb the sea stretched before 
her. 

The gray waves broke on gray rocks and burst into 
whiteness. Along the sand they came in less rough- 
ly, hurrying, one wave following fast upon another. 

There was a joy in being so high up, and a sense of 
companionship in the sea. Viva, as she stood looking 
down upon the waves, breathing in salt whiffs from 
them, with their continuous dull roar in her ears, felt 
her spirits rise unaccountably. 

Yet it was not a cheerful day. Splashes of white, 
diminishing gradually into mere dots, spread over the 
sea till its grayness melted into the grayness of the sky. 
One or two fishing boats were tossing about, with an 
exhilarating suggestion of danger. 

Viva felt all things were more in tune with her than 
if they had been blue and sunny; her sense of desolate- 
ness began to slip away. 

A golf ball flew past her, preceding the sound of 


voices. 


THE FEEEDOM OF HENEY MEEEDYTH. 197 

With one glance back at the hotel, far below her 
among the sand hills, she began to climb down to the 
sea. 

She had meant to avoid the golfers, but as she 
scrambled down a steep sandy slope she suddenly found 
herself on a putting-green, and almost face to face with 
two pla} r ers. 

A moment later all the growing pleasure faded out 
of Viva’s pretty face, displaced by the hard look which 
was becoming habitual to it, as she recognised her 
father. 

He had just made a hole, and as he turned to his 
companion, a tall, rather good-looking woman, his eyes 
met his daughter’s. 

The expression that flashed into Viva’s face was 
quite legible to him. He saw the meeting had come 
to her with a shock — a shock in which she realized there 
were women in the world to be feared besides Alison. 

Meredyth had grown quite used to think of himself 
as a free man, but every fresh realization of it brought 
him a certain pleasure. 

He put up his hand to stroke his mustache and 
hide a smile at the consternation in Viva’s face. 

“ Hullo, Viva! ” he said, bringing his words with a 
drawl of special deliberation. — “ Mrs. Packenham, may 
I introduce my daughter to you? ” 

Vivien was at her stiffest and most ungracious in a 
moment. 

Meredyth watched the severity with which Mrs. Pack- 
enham’s advances were received with much amusement. 


198 THE fkeedom of henky mekedyth. 

When a stroke had separated him from his opponent 
for a moment, he said carelessly to Viva: 

“ You needn’t put yourself out to come round with 
us, my dear. It’s all right; the caddies never lose sight 
of us.” 

“ I see,” said Viva hotly, “ it is quite time I 
came.” 

Meredyth shrugged his shoulders. 

“ I am afraid,” he said, “ we shall have an exhaust- 
ing time chaperoning each other. Your ball went a little 
more to the right, Mrs. Packenham. Shall I come and 
have a look?” 

Vivien felt her position untenable. She followed 
awkwardly for a couple of holes, and then left them and 
went back to the hotel. 

Disagreeables seemed crowding, and she met every- 
thing as a tragedy, looking for the worst. She already 
saw her father married to Mrs. Packenham. 

In the evening, he, with a certain amount of malice, 
came to the public drawing-room for the first time since 
he had been at the hotel, and encouraged Mrs. Pack- 
enham to sing, leaning over her and challenging Vivien’s 
eyes. 

If the child was such a fool as to think a man who 
had known Alison Carnegie was in danger from an 
affected little fool like Mrs. Packenham, why, she de- 
served to suffer. He failed to remember that he had 
never given his daughter reason to believe him par- 
ticular. 

Mrs. Packenham’s airs amused him, and her flattery. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 199 

coarse though it was, pleased a man who found all flat- 
tery welcome. 

Vivien tried not to watch them, hut found she could 
not help it. 

In her suppressed irritation Jossy presented him- 
self as a victim, and another battle with him ended this 
most disagreeable of days. 

Jossy, if he had been spoiled at home, was much 
more spoiled now. 

He was a quick, amusing little fellow, and everybody 
made much of him, some people for his own sake, and 
some, perhaps, for his father’s. 

Meredyth was handsome, he had beautiful manners, 
and sometimes took the trouble to make himself very 
charming. He was popularly supposed to be a widower, 
and known to be the brother of the Earl of Meredyth — 
some people had even discovered that it was on the 
cards he might some day be an earl himself. 

This was generally carefully explained to new- 
comers, who were inclined to think his position anoma- 
lous. 

Consequently he was a centre of interest in a hotel 
where men were few in this early part of the season 
and women were many. 

Jossy added the reflected popularity of his father to 
his own, and profited by it to have much of his own 
way. 

When Viva’s attention was suddenly called to him 
he was sitting on the floor in a circle of admiring ladies 
arranging a collection of shells. Jossy had a mania for 


200 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

collecting. In London he had collected crests and 
stamps; here he went in for shells and seaweed and sea 
anenomes. 

“ Jossy,” said Viva sharply, “ do yon know that it is 
ten o’clock? You ought to have been in bed two hours 
ago.” 

Jossy looked up from his shells defiantly. 

“ I never go to bed till I choose,” he said. 

“ Don’t he absurd. Put that rubbish away like a 
good boy, and go at once.” 

Jossy took no notice; he began to rearrange his 
shells, drawing his mouth into obstinate lines, and look- 
ing like an absurd little miniature of his father in a 
similar mood. 

“Jossy, do you hear me? ” 

Vivien spoke in a low voice, conscious of all the 
other people in the room. When Jossy made mo answer, 
she went up to him and repeated her words in an angry 
whisper. 

“ Father,” said Jossy, in his shrillest voice, “ I 
needn’t go to bed, need I ? ” 

Meredyth was still among the music with Mrs. Pack- 
enhain. He started and turned round in his chair. 

“ What is the matter? ” he said. 

Jossy scrambled to his feet and went over to his 
father’s side. 

“ Heed I go to bed? Please say I meed not,” he re- 
peated insistently. 

“Father,” said Vivien, “this is an absurd hour for 
Jossy to be up.” She was exceedingly angry and in- 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 201 


dignant. Jossy had never before completely rebelled 
from her authority. 

Meredyth felt himself ridiculous, and was conse- 
quently annoyed. 

He raised his eyebrows. 

“ I think, if you will excuse me saying so, you had 
both better go to bed,” he said. “ Jossy, Vivien is quite 
right.” 

He ended, seeing a storm in Vivien’s face, and doubt- 
ful of her self-control. 

“ But, father, I never go to bed till I like when Viva 
is not here.” 

“ Then the sooner you get into good habits the bet- 
ter,” said Meredyth, turning away. 

Mrs. Packenham put in a plea for Jossy, which Viva 
felt unendurable, till Meredyth dismissed it slightly and 
sent off Jossy, pouting, with a few decided words. 

“ I am very sorry you came,” he repeated to Vivien 
with passion. 

When the child had felt the room and Mrs. Packen- 
ham had begun to play a thunderous march Meredyth 
turned to Vivien and gave her a few words in his slow- 
est drawl. 

“ Vivien, I am quite aware that Jossy and I are an 
anxious responsibility, but do try to manage us less vio- 
lently. Don’t let us both have to say we are sorry you 


came.' 


CHAPTER VI. 


“ There is the manager. Sir, I want to tell you 
that the mutton chops we had at breakfast were too 
tough to eat — disgracefully tough.” 

The little fat, gray-hearded man who spoke was 
working himself up to indignation. He had only ar- 
rived the night before, hut had already proved himself 
to he a man of many complaints. 

Vivien, realizing that her father was addressed, looked 
up with a start from the hook she had on her knee, using 
it less to read than as a protection. 

Meredyth was examining Mrs. Packenham’s bicycle 
just outside the veranda. 

He looked up vaguely. 

“ I* beg your pardon? ” 

“ I was speaking, sir, of the mutton at breakfast. 
In a place like this, where the terms are so high, you 
ought to he ashamed of such mutton.” 

Meredyth found himself colouring faintly under 
Vivien’s eye, and drawled his answer. 

“ I can’t see why I should he ashamed, as I am nei- 
ther the cook nor the butcher,” he said, and turned his 
back. — “ Mrs. Packenham, I think it is all right now.” 

202 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 203 

Just at her elbow Vivien heard a horrified explana- 
tion from an older resident. 

She caught the words: “An honourable/’ “the Earl 
of Meredyth’s brother/’ and a dismayed exclamation 
or two from the newcomer, followed by a suggestion of 
apology. 

She was faintly amused, while uneasily conscious that 
she had no bicycle, and that, once mounted, her father 
and Mrs. Packenham would he beyond*her chaperonage. 

Mrs. Packenham also fully expected his society. She 
deserved it, as for the last quarter of an hour she had 
been trying to enjoy having tiny and very wet crabs 
crawled over her by Jossy. 

Poor Mrs. Packenham smiled heroically and tried 
to look as if she liked having her too-smart dress 
splashed with salt water. 

But Meredyth saw her off serenely, without an idea 
of accompanying her, though he was not the man to be 
unconscious that she expected it. 

He could not have gone had he wished, as he had to 
drive the coach to the ferry. 

He started very soon afterward, finding, as he always 
did, a certain satisfaction in gathering the reins into his 
hand and making the four horses answer to his control. 

But it was a long, solitary drive. Almost at once 
he found thoughts, chiefly unpleasant ones, flooding in 
upon him, and he had ceased to be able to throw them 
aside. 

More than a year ago the easy, comfortable life he 
had led for so long had come to an abrupt end. He 


204 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

had tried at first to shut out disagreeables still, as he 
had done for so long; even now there were times when 
he tried. 

But he seldom succeeded for long. Removed from 
the influence of habit, transplanted from the life 
become to him as second nature, he found himself daily 
more keenly awake to his position. 

It was degrading, almost discreditable, for a man 
of his age to be, *as it were, beginning life. Meredyth, 
with keenest pain, recognised crows’ feet and odd gray 
hairs. And he was no further advanced than he had 
been twenty years ago. 

He had meant to do so much, and he had done no- 
thing. His contemporaries had passed him in every di- 
rection, striking out toward success. In many cases they 
had already reached it, and people knew their names. 

And nothing had stood in his way; he had been clever 
enough, well-off, powerfully connected — nothing hut a 
certain supineness, an indolence, from which, Meredyth 
told himself with a gleam of his old vanity, if Evelyn 
had had a spark of intellect, she might easily have roused 
him. 

Why had he wasted his life? Why had he not mar- 
ried Alison Carnegie? 

Meredyth drove on unseeingly. The bitterness of 
too late was upon him. In his self-pity and self-con- 
tempt he was surprised to find stinging tears spring to 
his eyes. 

Alison grew before him with her sweet eager face 
and soft brown hair. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 205 


With her he would have made something of his life, 
and not found himself left stranded at forty. 

But he had no right, absolutely no right, to dream 
of Alison now. 

In no possible way — not by the sweat of his brow 
or the very barter of his soul — could he make those twen- 
ty wasted years as if they had not been. 

It was too late to begin — Meredyth recognised it was 
out of his power to begin; he had lost the energy, the 
capability for concentration, which alone could help him 
— rather he had thrown it away. 

He could not change the character he had allowed 
to form. It was a thousand times too late. 

And yet only one man’s life stood between him and 
all he wished for — one man’s life, but a life that was as 
good as, indeed better than, his. Before him the pos- 
sibility of this fresh chance in life would always be, to 
come to him, perhaps, when he was an old man and had 
lost all power of hope of enjoyment. 

It was unbearable to have to sit there, with no means 
of escaping from his thoughts. 

Meredyth swore to himself under his breath. He 
lighted a cigar and tried to think of other things — of 
the horses out at the farm — of an effort he had made the 
other evening toward starting an article suitable for 
some sporting paper. He thought of Mrs. Packenham, 
and tried to imagine himself into an interest in her be- 
yond the soothing effect of her admiration and flat- 
tery. 

But he could not. Her ridiculous little airs and 
14 


206 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

graces, her vulgarities, her flattery of Jossy, flocked into 
his mind, bringing a half smile to his lips. 

With them came a thought of Viva. 

What was to he done with her? How was it possible 
for him to look after her as she needed to he looked 
after? How could he look after her at all without mak- 
ing himself ridiculous? 

Even this morning he had noticed that she was 
beginning to wake up to interest in the people in the 
hotel. He had seen her brighten visibly under the open- 
ing attentions of a bumptious young man he suspected 
of a shop. 

Vivien had no sense, no perception, and a keen liking 
for a man. How could she fail in this, he asked him- 
self sarcastically, if heredity went for anything? 

If she could not recognise a gentleman, and found 
knickerbockers and ^flannels all-sufficient, what could 
he do? 

And she was not given to frankness; what she did 
gained an extra gratification in being done secretly. 
It was a fatal place for her. 

Meredyth found his thoughts were not growing more 
cheerful. He checked the horses and told the groom to 
come to the box-seat. 

The rest of the way he sought and found refuge in 
words, and on the way hack a man who was coming to 
the hotel for a week’s fishing sat beside him and proved 
congenial, raising his spirits. 

When he drove up to the hotel with his coach of new 
arrivals the first person he caught sight of was Viva. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 207 

She was sitting on the veranda railing, her pretty 
face alight with eagerness and excitement, and she was 
talking to the young man Meredyth found so offensive. 

As he watched them they turned away and walked 
off among the sand hills. 

So it had begun already. 

Meredyth shrugged his shoulders and sauntered into 
the hotel. 


CHAPTER VII. 


The next few weeks passed slowly enough. The 
hotel grew gradually fuller, and Meredyth found him- 
self with a fair amount to do. 

But, except as far as the farm six miles off was con- 
cerned, his occupations were exceedingly uncongenial. 
He had to arrange picnics and expeditions, plan golf 
and tennis tournaments, and make himself generally 
agreeable. 

There were days when he told himself he could stand 
the life no longer — that he must throw it up and find 
something else to do. 

But the memory of his difficult struggle and Pimley’s 
ale, the thought of his four children, held him. 

He found Vivien a very disturbing element in his 

life. 

She was entirely rebellious. She found herself much 
admired, and the constant excitement of it passed the 
days. 

Meredyth saw that it was any man, and found it in- 
tensely disagreeable. 

He said nothing at first, but Viva found an added 
excitement in imagining him in the light of a cruel 
parent. She made mysteries, enjoying jthem. 

208 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 209 

The constant strain and a dim sense that she was 
acting foolishly made her irritable, and she and Jossy 
quarrelled constantly. 

Sometimes a few acts of careless civility on Mere- 
dyth’s part roused her into a jealous watch upon his 
action, so pronounced occasionally as to threaten to 
make him ridiculous. 

He was a man always to find pleasure in women’s 
society, and the consciousness of Viva’s observation 
sometimes goaded him on, while at times it restrained 
him. 

Once an old lady to whom he had exerted himself 
to be charming spoke to him about Vh?a. 

Meredyth was very- polite. 

“ There are some men,” he said, “ one can see at 
once are destined for husbands and fathers. I’m not. 
I should make a very decent sort of son, and a pass- 
able lover. That is, I should have made,” he added 
quickly, acutely sensitive to a possible opening for ridi- 
cule. 

But that evening he did gather all his resolution 
and spoke to Vivien. He disliked doing so intensely. 

It was a delicious evening. Most of the people in 
the hotel had come out on the veranda after dinner. 

A few row r dy spirits had seized a couple of invalid’s 
bath chairs, and tw r o girls were being raced up and down 
the passages in them. 

While Meredyth hesitated, as he always did, to make 
himself disagreeable by interference, an invalid pro- 
tested and they were driven out. 


210 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


Vivien had been a ringleader. She came out to the 
veranda, flushed and laughing, with a couple of men 
in attendance. 

She had on a white alpaca skirt and a pale blue 
blouse that matched her eyes. She had stuck a blue 
tam-o’-shanter on the top of her fair hair, and she looked 
very pretty. 

“ I think golf by moonlight would be splendid,” she 
said. 

Meredyth moved deliberately down the veranda to 
her side. 

“ Vivien,” he said, “ I want to speak to you.” 

Vivien turned a suddenly defiant face on him. 

“ Well? ” she said. 

“ Come as far as the first putting green.” 

Vivien raised her eyebrows with a careful expression 
of surprise. 

“ Certainly,” she said. — “ Mr. Manning, don’t forget 
you have promised to bring out your banjo.” 

Meredyth made no further remark. He waited for 
her calmly, throwing away his cigafette, and deliberately 
making himself a fresh one. 

When they were out of hearing of the others Vivien 
turned on him at once. 

“Well?” she said. “Whatever it is we had better 
get it over.” 

Meredyth paused to strike a match. 

“ My dear Viva, I wish your manners were not so 
deplorable,” he said. 

Vivien gave an impatient movement. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 211 

“ I don’t suppose you have brought me out here to 
discuss my manners.” 

“ I think that would be quite sufficient justification. 
What I really wanted to ask you, Vivien, is whether 
you can honestly recommend Mr. Manning as a dentist.” 

Vivien coloured hotly. 

“ It is all very well to sneer. Lots of dentists are 
gentlemen.” 

“ I have no doubt of it. It is beside the question 
that Mr. Manning is not. But do you think ■” 

“And at any rate a dentist is as good as a hotel 
keeper.” 

Meredyth stiffened suddenly and perceptibly. For 
a moment or two he was silent, suppressing an inclina- 
tion to anger; then he laughed. 

“ Another of your friends is, to the best of my belief, 
in a shop, and Mr. Blessington did me the honour to. in- 
form me he was in the finance department, which I 
have discovered to be a poetical way of saying he is a 
bank clerk.” 

“Well,” said Viva, “and what then? What does 
a man’s profession matter, or his birth for the matter 
of that? ” 

Meredyth gave a long whistle. 

“ I beg your pardon,” he said. “ I had no idea you 
were a socialist.” 

“I am a socialist so far,” said Viva hotly, “that I 
refuse to see any reason for- treating people as the dirt 
beneath your feet because they happen to be in a slight- 
ly different rank of life.” 


212 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


“ It is pleasant to find a point on which we entirely 
agree,” said Meredyth. 

“And in my opinion one man is as good as an- 
other.” 

“Very probably yon are right, my dear; but may I 
in my turn remind you that I did not bring you here 
to listen to a lecture on socialism? Your sentiments 
do you honour. But are you aware that while en- 
grossed in socialism you are getting yourself consider- 
ably talked about? ” 

Vivien stamped her foot impatiently. 

“Talked about! I am sure I don’t care! A lot of 
scandalous, vulgar old gossips — who minds what they 
say?” 

“ Be consistent, Vivien; one man is as good as an- 
other. If you don’t care, I do. Vivien, I would be 
very much obliged if you would even go so far as to 
leave the running after to be done by your friends — it 
would be more dignified.” 

“ Father! ” 

“ Once for all, I can’t have you going on as you are 
doing, and I won’t. You are disgracing yourself and 
me, and making little of yourself. I tell you, it must 
stop.” 

Meredyth ended in his coldest and most cutting 
tones. 

Vivien turned on him furiously. 

“ I don’t care — I don’t care in the smallest degree 
what you think! ” she said passionately. “ Why should 
I? You have neglected me all my life, and now, just 


THE FREEDOM OB HENRY MEREDYTH. 213 

because you choose to say a word, I am to give up every- 
thing! But I don’t care — what you choose to say or 
think makes no difference to me.” 

She waited for no answer. She turned abruptly 
from her father, hurrying back to the hotel with quick, 
agitated steps, leaving Meredyth standing where he was, 
meditatively drawing circles in the sand with his stick. 

Vivien’s words had hurt him keenly, and there was 
pain as well as utter perplexity in his mind. He knew 
he had done harm rather than good, recognising it still 
more clearly when he came back to the hotel and found 
Mr. Manning and Vivien had vanished together. 

He went to his room and smoked one pipe after an- 
other, trying to think what he should do. 

Before he went to bed he wrote a long letter to Ali- 
son Carnegie. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Slanamullagh Hotel, June 29 th . 

“My dear Alice: I generally turn to you when I 
am at my wit’s end, and I am now. Will you come to 
the rescue? The position is this: Vivien is quite out 
of the power of man to manage; possibly a woman might 
be more successful. Will you come over here and have 
a try? 

“ I know it’s awfully selfish of me to ask you, but I 
always was a selfish fellow. Then I suppose Milly must 
come for her holidays in a week or two, and if she fol- 
lows in Vivien’s train there will be a pretty kettle of 
fish. Vivien has managed to offend Judith so direly 
that all chance of sending her to them is over. It’s a 
solemn thing to have a daughter. 

“ There are odd times when I feel inclined to let 
the whole thing slide and to hang myself, or something 
equivalent. 

“ Do turn your charity in my direction. It’s on the 
cards you might make something of me yet. 

“ Seriously, very seriously, if you possibly can come 
over and set us to rights, do. 

“ Are you working as hard as ever? We are simply 
existing in this back-of-the-world place. You might 
214 




THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 215 

find it pleasant enough for a change. Do yon mind 
twenty-four miles on the top of a coach to begin with? 

“ Ever sincerely yours, 

“ J. H. B. Meredyth.” 

Alison got Meredyth’s letter at breakfast time, and 
thought over it all morning at intervals between mak- 
ing up accounts. 

It was very characteristic in its appeal, which he 
was careful not to make too personal, while at the same 
time he obviously never lost sight of himself and his 
own position. 

When things went wrong he turned to Alison in- 
stinctively, just as instinctively as he had forgotten her 
during the years when all was well with him. 

He needed her now — he needed her, and so did Viv- 
ien, though she did not know it. The child had been 
spoilt among them — perhaps irredeemably spoilt. She 
had had a ruinous bringing up. 

Alison thought over the letter, finding any idea of 
refusal impossible, and yet realizing that she could not 
agree without paying for it. 

People would talk; she knew exactly what they 
would say and how they would say it. 

But she had no hesitation in making up her 
mind. 

What did any gossip really matter to her in her in- 
dependent life? 

There were two other drawbacks. One was the real 
inconvenience it would cause her to leave London just 


216 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

then. The other was a memory of Meredyth’s changed 
manner. 

Alison deliberately decided not to give herself up 
to considering future possible difficulties. It was a mis- 
take to look too far ahead. Meredyth was so impressible; 
he might have changed his whole view of life and of 
her in his different surroundings. 

So many difficulties, even difficulties that looked 
insurmountable in the future, settled themselves with 
a little patience. 

Abram Sassoon, who kept no conventional calling 
hours, broke in upon her decision. 

He was a favourite of hers, and just now his coming 
was particularly a convenience. 

He came into the room flourishing a paper, and, as 
usual, beginning to speak before he had crossed the 
threshold. 

“ I know I am an awful nuisance coming so early, 
but, Miss Carnegie, just look at this. Did you ever see 
such a brute of a review?” 

“ You have just come at the right moment as far as 
I am concerned. Is it your novel? ” 

Sassoon’s eager face was half vexed, half amused. 

“ Just listen,” he said, flourishing his paper. “ ‘ Mr. 
Sassoon has overwhelmed us with good things. He 
offers us two or three plots, a generous allowance of 
characters, and every Jewish anecdote and character- 
istic he has happened to know of. He has collected 
excellent materials for two or three three-volume 
novels. Perhaps some day, when he is a little older, 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 217 

he may undertake the task of reducing order out of 
chaos/ ” 

Sassoon paused, then he looked at Alison, and they 
both laughed. 

He really minded very little, taking life with an easy 
optimism, and having a comfortable self-confidence. He 
knew Alison in the main agreed with the review, and 
he said so with a laugh. 

“ But never mind the old book; better luck next 
time. Did you want me, Miss Carnegie ? ” 

“ Well, I did. Sit down, and stop flourishing that 
paper; you have narrowly escaped knocking over that 
vase several times. When do you want to take your 
fathers and mothers to the country? ” 

“ Oh, not before August. It’s the best time for 
them to get away, and the duke won’t be at Luxmore, 
so I am sure we can get leave if we decide to take them 
there.” 

“ Because I am thinking of going to Ireland for a 
week or two.” 

“ To Ireland! ” 

Sassoon repeated her words blankly, with a face of 
quick disappointment. 

“ You look as astounded as if I had said I was going 
to the West Indies,” said Alison, careful that her tone 
should be stolidly matter of fact. “ I am going over to 
Slanamullagh. Vivien Meredyth is there, you know, 
and I want to see her, and perhaps bring her back here 
or to Scotland with me.” 

Sassoon said nothing for a moment. He sat medi- 


218 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


tatively tying up the fringe of a small table near 
him into knots in a way which pained Alison’s tidy 
soul. 

“ Well,” he said, “ I did promise Miss Meredyth I 
would go over there for a holiday some time.” 

He reddened as he spoke, and Alison had an idea. 
Sassoon reddened easily, but still, combining this with 
his words, it might mean something. Sassoon had seen 
a good deal of Vivien in the winter; what more natural 
and what more desirable than the possibility that he 
might be growing to care for her? 

Full of this idea, Alison bore the sight of her table 
fringe growing into a more and more inextricable en- 
tanglement. 

“ That is a good idea,” she said easily. “ Why not 
come over with me? I am sure you need a holiday.” 

“ Might I? I say, that would be ripping! ” said 
Sassoon, suddenly beaming. “ I could get away now, 
I am sure. But do you really mean it? Shouldn’t I be 
a bother? ” 

“ On the contrary, my dear boy, you will be exceed- 
ingly useful, and it will be delightful for me to have 
you. It will do you all the good in the world to try 
amusing yourself for a change.” 

“ It will be splendid,” said Sassoon, “ and there are 
two fellows in that big city shop I was telling you 
about — I wonder could I get leave for them? ” 

“ I beg you won’t do anything of the kind,” said 
Alison, laughing a little. “ This is to be a holiday, Mr. 
Sassoon, and really, even for the sake of your work, it 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 219 

will be better to take a complete one. So don’t attempt 
to turn us into an East End excursion party.” 

Sassoon laughed; he even seemed pleased to agree. 
And in a moment he was eager to know what day Miss 
Carnegie would start — how soon? 

He was hotly impatient to be off. 

Alison, while she saw nothing in his manner abso- 
lutely to confirm her suspicion about Vivien, certainly 
saw nothing against it. 

Surely this would be the best thing for the girl. 
Sassoon, though he was very young and boyish, was 
steady and reliable, and in Vivien’s case marriage seemed 
particularly desirable. 


CHAPTER IX. 


“ Viva,” said Jossy, dancing into his sister’s room 
in great excitement, “ who do yon think is coming on 
the coach with father to-day? I give you twenty thou- 
sand guesses and you will never guess.” 

“ I wish you would occasionally remember to knock 
at the door,” said Vivien. 

She was feeling much happier than usual this after- 
noon. The sun was shining, and she was putting on her 
hat preparatory to a first bicycle lesson. There was to be 
an expedition by boat to some caves next day, and Viva 
loved being on the sea. Above all, for several days she 
had not had one of the despairing, complaining epistles 
from her mother, which always upset her. 

Her rebuke was so mild that Jossy felt encouraged 
rather than otherwise. 

“ But, Viva, do try to guess. Father said I was to 
tell you, and I said I would give you three guesses 
first.” 

"What a baby you are, Jossy! If father said you 
were to tell me, you had better do it at once, for I am 
going out. Don’t fidget with the things on my dressing 
table.” 

Jossy having just contrived to knock over a bottle 
220 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 221 


of eau de Cologne , hastily proceeded to distract Viva’s 
attention with his news. 

“ Father said I was to tell yon that yon were to have 
tea ready for Alison when the coach came back.” 

“ Alison! ” 

Vivien, on her way to the door, stopped short, turn- 
ing on Jossy a face white with dismay. 

“ Is Alison coming?” she said. 

“ Yes,” said Jossy, “and I know that I’m very 
glad.” 

“ Yon don’t understand,” said Viva. “ 0 Jossy! 
yon don’t understand! I can’t bear it! No wonder he 
was ashamed to tell me himself.” 

The pleasure had gone out of the day. Vivien’s 
blackest mood was upon her, bringing with it crowding 
suspicions of her father and Alison. 

“How can she dare to come?” she said under her 
breath. 

“ And, Viva, father said you were to have tea 
ready ” 

“ Tell father I got his message after I had made 
other arrangements. I shan’t he in till dinner time.” 

Viva walked out of the room, her head held high, 
her mind full of passionate indignation. 

Her father indeed thought little of her when he con- 
sidered it enough to send her a careless message by her 
little brother. Or he was ashamed to face her. 

Vivien was firmly determined that in so far as lay in 
her power Alison’s visit should not he a pleasant one. 

Jossy, rejoiced at his escape from discovery, picked 
15 


222 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

up the remnants of the eau-de-Cologne bottle and ar- 
ranged them neatly on the dressing table. 

He puzzled a good deal over what his sister had 
said, in the end deciding that Viva’s moods were past 
comprehension. 

He, at least, was glad that Alison was coming, and 
he spent the afternoon getting his aquarium and col- 
lections into good order for her. 

But Viva started off for a long expedition over the 
sand hills, determined to mark her avoidance. 

So it was Jossy, and only Jossy, who rushed eagerly 
to greet Alison as the coach drove up to the door, 
scarcely leaving her time to get down before he tumbled 
into her arms. 

But she, even while she greeted him, gave a quick 
glance round. 

“ Where is Vivien ? 99 said Meredyth sharply. 

“ She has gone out over the sand hills,” said 
J ossy. 

“ Did you tell her Alison was coming? ” 

“ Yes, father. And I think perhaps she was offended 
at its being a message given by me. But I have got tea 
ready,” said Jossy. 

“ You see,” said Meredyth bitterly, “ what a sweetly 
mannered, obedient daughter I have.” 

Alison looked disappointed in spite of herself — so 
disappointed that he hastily changed his tone. 

“ But never mind. Alice, are you very tired, or shall 
we have tea before you go in? ” 

“ I feel rather hot and travel-stained, hut neverthe- 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 223 


less, if you are not ashamed of my dirt and dust, I think 
tea would he good,” said Alison. 

Meredyth turned to Jossy and told him to have it 
brought out on the veranda. He found Alison a long 
easy-ehair, sending Jossy for a cushion and then for 
a stool, and exerting himself to make her comfort- 
able. 

Sassoon, who had fraternized with two ancient ladies 
on the coach, and waited to see them and their baggage 
into the hotel, came over to the others, professing an 
eager desire for tea, but accepting Meredyth’s sugges- 
tion of a whisky and soda gratefully. 

Alison and Meredyth found his presence just then 
rather a relief. 

It forced the conversation into easy, commonplace 
channels, and Sassoon never lacked something to say. 

Alison leaned back in her chair and did not talk 
much. She was tired; the drive had been very long, 
and very hot in the unsheltered exposure of the coach. 

Meredyth watched her furtively. Seen among the 
sand hills in Ireland, she seemed much more desirable 
than she had ever done in London. 

Most of the conversation fell to Sassoon, with Jossy’s 
assistance. 

But presently, almost before tea was over, Jossy ap- 
pealed to Alison, urging her, with a spoilt child’s insist- 
ence, to come and see his collections. 

“ But, Jossy, dear, I am tired. Let me rest first, and 
see them later on.” 

“But they are all just ready,” said Jossy, pouting, 


224 the freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ and the crabs are running about like anything. Do, 
please, come.” 

He stood dragging at her hand, and Alison, nerv- 
ously anxious to keep Jossy’s alliance, would have 
yielded. 

But Meredyth said: “ Don’t talk nonsense. Run 
away now, and don’t bother us. Alison is tired, and I 
urn not going to have you make a slave of her.” 

“ But, father ” 

“ Look here, Jossy, take me,” said Sassoon. “ I 
adore crabs; I used to catch them.” 

“ Oh, did you? ” said Jossy, eager at once. “ Then 
tell me what they ought to eat. Is it sea-weed or little 
fishes? ” 

They went off together happily, and in their ab- 
sence a short silence fell between the other two. Alison 
felt Meredyth was looking at her, and, in spite of her- 
self, found it an effort to be absolutely natural. 

Meredyth spoke first. 

“ Alice,” he said, “ I have missed you awfully. It 
was nothing short of angelic of you to come.” 

Alison under his look felt, with a sudden misgiving, 
that she might indeed have done better to stay away. 
She struggled with a sense of having put herself into a 
false position in coming. 

“ But I wish,” she said, “ you had told Viva I was 
coming yourself, and a little sooner.” 

It was so characteristic, so like him, to have sent 
Vivien a message by Jossy at the last moment to save 
himself from anything disagreeable. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 225 

“ I wish I had,” said Meredyth, “ but I don’t know 
that it would have done any good. You know, Alice, 
I suppose, why Viva behaves like this? ” 

He leaned forward, his elbow on his knee, and looked 
at her earnestly. 

“You know, I suppose, that it is jealousy?” he 
went on deliberately. “ She thinks I care too much 
for you — and I am not at all sure that she isn’t right,” 
he ended with a sigh. 

He had by no means intended to speak to Alison like 
this. It was the sudden meeting with her, making him 
realize how much pleasure it brought him, the long, hot 
drive by her side, the novel surroundings of their meeting. 

“ I did flatter myself, Henry,” said Alison, “ that 
there was at any rate one woman in the world you did 
not talk nonsense to. It is ridiculous for two middle- 
aged people like ourselves to sit here making pretty 
speeches to each other.” 

The word “ ridiculous ” generally succeeded with 
Meredyth. It succeeded now. He pulled himself to- 
gether, half offended and half relieved. 

“ I don’t see that you have made many pretty 
speeches,” he said, rather sulkily. “ You have never 
even said you were glad to see me, and all the drive we 
couldn’t say a word except what every one could hear, 
and particularly that young Sassoon. What on earth 
did you bring him for? ” 

“ He wanted to come,” said Alison; “ he wanted to 
come so very much that I am inclined to think — to hope 
— that Viva must be the attraction.” 


226 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

“ Viva! Good heavens! Alice, the fellow’s a Jew — • 
and such coats! ” 

Alison laughed. 

“ If he marries Viva, you can arrange that he 
changes his tailor in the settlements,” she said; “ and, 
as for his being a Jew, I should he inclined to put a 
good Jew considerably before a bad Christian. He is a 
very conscientious, unselfish young fellow.” 

“ What a terrible character! Why don’t you add 
‘ worthy’ and ‘ amiable’ at once and finish him off? 
However, if Viva attracts him — but I can’t imagine 
Viva’s attracting any one.” 

“ He told me he had promised to come over.” 

“ Poor deluded young man! If he marries Viva, I 
shall feel I could weep for him.” 

“ Henry, don’t he so hard upon Viva. She has never 
had a chance,” said Alison. 

But she, too, felt that on Sassoon’s side the benefit 
might perhaps he doubtful. 

“ It’s not in our power to arrange it at any rate,” 
she said. “ Henry, it’s a glorious afternoon. If I go 
and wash off my travel stains, will you take me down 
to the sea? I feel shut in here; I want to see it.” 

“ I will take you anywhere you want to go — always,” 
said Meredyth. 

Finding it pleasant so to speak to her, he scarcely 
troubled to restrain himself, though he saw that it made 
her uncomfortable. 


CHAPTER X. 


Vivien got back to the hotel about an hour be- 
fore dinner. She had played two rounds of golf, and 
pla} r ed them exceedingly badly, with a distracted 
mind. 

She had postponed her meeting with Alison, but 
she could not postpone thinking of her, and wondering 
what she and Meredyth were saying to each other, and 
what they had thought of her rudeness. 

When she got back it was to find Sassoon just in 
front of the veranda, and he was a great surprise. He 
had already struck up acquaintance with a couple of 
idle caddies, and was deeply engaged in a conversation 
which their limited English made difficult. 

They were wild little mountain boys, with shock 
heads and bare feet, and Sassoon had fraternized with 
them promptly. 

He abandoned them at once for Viva, coming 
forward, setting her caddy to work on her clubs, and 
taking possession of her, much to the disgust of her 
escort of the moment. 

Viva was undoubtedly delighted to see him. 

“ I thought you had forgotten us,” she said. 

227 


228 the freedom of henry meredyth. 


“And I thought you had forgotten us,” said Sas- 
soon, “this afternoon. It was so unkind of you to go 
out.” 

“ I didn’t know you were coming,” said Viva. “ Oh, 
did you come with Alison Carnegie? ” 

Sassoon nodded. 

“ And you went out.” 

“ Well, I’ve come in again now at any rate,” said 
Viva colouring. “ How is the East End getting on, 
Mr. Sassoon?” 

“ Do you remember O’Neil’s pet convert — the man 
with the wooden leg who used to recite? He married a 
girl thirty years younger than himself last week, and 
he has given her two black eyes already. O’Neil is much 
distressed. And that charming old Mrs. Reilly we were 
all devoted to — she has just died, after being supported 
for ten years by charity, and has left £300 to her rela- 
tions. And, 0 Miss Meredyth! I almost forgot — your 
friend, Miss Hrquhart, is going to be married! How 
are the mighty fallen! ” 

“Miss Hrquhart!” said Viva. “Mr. Sassoon, you 
can’t mean it — you can’t! After all she said about 
marriage ■” 

“ And about men. Well, he’s a very little man, and, 
I should imagine, thoroughly trained and domesticated. 
I told you it wouldn’t be safe to ask her.” 

“ I don’t think any one is to be trusted,” said Viva 
solemnly. 

The news came to her as a shock. She had believed 
in Miss Hrquhart, and admired her and listened humbly, 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 229 

if not entirely with conviction, to the words that fell 
from her mouth. This sudden abandonment of all her 
theories was bewildering. 

“ Surely you don’t disapprove of marriage, Miss 
Meredyth,” said Sassoon. “ You are not old enough, 
nor — please let me say — ugly enough. You see talking 
of Miss Urquhart still makes me rude.” 

Marriage was a favourite subject of Sassoon’s, and 
gave him an opportunity of airing many theories. 

They were in a heat of discussion when Alison and 
Meredyth, escorted by Jossy, came hack from the sea, 
and certainly looked hopefully engrossed with one an- 
other. 

Vivien, lying back in a long chair, was listening 
lazily, half interested and half amused; Sassoon had 
his hack to the sand hills. He had tipped up his chair, 
and was leaning over it, talking eagerly and emphatic- 
ally. 

Meredyth and Alison caught a sentence as they 
came up. 

“ But I shall not allow my daughters to go to school; 
it’s different for sons, but girls ought to be educated at 
home,” said Sassoon, with much decision. 

“I say, Alice! They don’t appear to he wasting 
time,” said Meredyth, giving her a look of amusement. 
“I scarcely expected to find arrangements had pro- 
gressed so far.” 

Viva, in the middle of her answer, caught sight of 
the others, and wavered, losing what she was going to 
say. Sassoon, following the direction of her eyes, 


230 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

wheeled round on his chair, and, seeing them, sprang to 
his feet. 

“ I have been hunting for you everywhere, Miss 
Carnegie,” he said. 

His unconsciousness, real or affected, saved the situ- 
ation. 

Vivien, very red and nervous, got up and let Alison 
kiss her in silence. Alison was prepared to confine her- 
self to a touching of hands, but Viva, forced by habit 
and Sassoon’s presence, gave her usual greeting. 

“ And what were you two talking about so eager- 
ly?” said Alison, to cover a silence. 

“ We were discussing matrimony,” said Sassoon. 

“ That is to say,” said Viva, nervously anxious to 
seem at ease, “ Mr. Sassoon was talking, while I occa- 
sionally seized an odd moment when he was out of 
breath.” 

“ I’m sorry,” said Sassoon; “ I do get hot about 
girls’ schools. I know what they are like.” 

“ Might I ask how you know?” said Meredyth. 

“ Oh, I know well enough. I have cousins, and I 
know what boys’ schools are. School ruins a girl. I 
am not going to be dogmatic ” 

“ That I am convinced of,” said Meredyth. 

Sassoon paused, looked at Meredyth, and suddenly 
laughed. 

“ On this subject at any rate,” he ended. “ I am 
only speaking about myself — about my own daughters.” 

“ You are a prudent man,” said Meredyth gravely. — • 
“ Jossy, come here and tell me if you intend to send 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTII. 231 

your daughters to school, and if so, whether you have 
yet decided on a school? ” 

Jossy, from a commanding position astride the 
veranda railings, stared at his father, perplexed by the 
gravity of his tone. 

“ It is only grown-up people who have daughters,” 
he said. 

“ I am afraid you have been so culpably negligent 
as not to reflect upon the matter,” Meredyth said. “ I 
beg you will give it your best consideration at once.” 

Sassoon had grown rather red, and looked annoyed. 
Alison saw it, and spoke to him about the golf course, 
restoring his temper in an instant. 

Meredyth, when they parted in the hall a few min- 
utes later to dress for dinner, said to Alison in a low 
voice that he quite realized it was imprudent on his part 
not to he more tender with his future son-in-law’s fads. 

“ It is rather a shame to laugh at him,” said Alison; 
“ he is so much in earnest, and there is a good deal to be 
said on his side.” 

“ He is a most excellent young prig,” Meredyth said; 
“ hut never mind. I shall he civil enough to him if the 
day ever comes when he asks me for Viva. My only 
struggle will he to prevent my joy seeming too over- 
powering, which wouldn’t he prudent.” 

Alison made no answer. Meredyth understood her 
silence thoroughly. 

He looked at her and laughed. 

“ There’s a lot of opening for reform about me, isn’t 
there?” he said. 


CHAPTER XI. 


Sassoon in a week had made friends with everybody 
in or about the hotel. He went about “ scraping up 
acquaintance/’ as he called it, with everybody. 

Meredyth had lived among the surrounding people 
almost as if they did not exist, and was astonished at 
the way Sassoon brought out the humanity in each one. 
Sassoon was perfectly happy eagerly discussing any sub- 
ject that happened to turn up with a knitting circle of 
old ladies, and equally happy in the middle of a dozen 
caddies. 

He sent for enormous bundles of sweets for the cad- 
dies, visited them in their cottages, made them promise 
to go to school in the winter, and tormented Meredyth 
to write, to his brother about a uniform for them. He 
also took the golf fever very badly, and generally en- 
joyed himself thoroughly. 

But Alison could not feel sure that he was in 
any wise devoted to Viva, though he evidently liked 
her. 

As Meredyth said, he often looked engrossed with 
her, but then he looked just as engrossed with old Mrs. 
Montgomery, who was a grandmother and wore coloured 
spectacles. 


232 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 233 

“But then,” Alison said, “he can’t want to marry 
Mrs. Montgomery.” 

“ He has too many interests to want to marry any- 
body. I believe he likes you a lot better than Viva. 
He is always in your pocket.” 

“Well, he can’t want to marry me!” said Alison, 
laughing. 

But she felt there was truth in what Meredyth said. 

Her own position at the hotel was not a pleasant 
one. Vivien kept her manner of stern aloofness, some- 
times amounting to rudeness, and only modified it a 
little in Sassoon’s presence. 

She took every precaution never to find herself 
alone with Alison. Once Alison had followed her on 
some excuse to her room, but found her reception ob- 
stinately chilling. 

It did not seem to her that her presence was of any 
use to Viva, and Sassoon’s only in so far that he had 
in a great measure displaced her stray friends. 

But though she did not know it, the knowledge that 
Alison was there had a restraining effect on Viva, mak- 
ing her more careful in what she said and did. 

Milly came over for her holidays, and proved friend- 
ly. She was not a pleasant or an interesting girl, being 
lazy and sullen, and disinclined to associate with any 
one except the servants, whose conversation and gossip 
had an attraction for her. 

But she liked being with Alison as long as she was 
not urged to any exertion. 

She and Vivien did not get on at all. 


234 the freedom of henry meredyth. 

Alison saw that Vivien was restless and unhappy. 
The girl did not know what was wrong with her. She 
craved to he kept up to the level of excitement she had 
made for herself in London, and found both the books 
and the people who brought it were harder to get. 

Once Alison, feeling rather ashamed of herself for 
it, tried to sound Sassoon as to his sentiments. 

It was a muggy, damp sort of day, and she had con- 
tented herself with a chair on the veranda and a book, 
though the veranda was not a favourite haunt of hers. 

She felt shut in and oppressed by the hills, and liked 
better to climb to a sheltered corner near the top, where 
she could see the sea. 

Sassoon had been playing billiards. He came out 
and threw himself on the ground at her feet, with a 
lazy rejoicing at finding her alone. 

“Where is Viva?” said Alison. 

“ I don’t know. Some fellow came along when we 
were in the hall and took her off to tennis or something. 
And since then,” said Sassoon, “my old Mrs. Mont- 
gomery has been trying to convert me.” 

“ To convert you? ” 

“ Yes. She first began to reproach me for not going 
to church, and then she nearly had a fit when I told her 
I wasn’t a Christian. Then she began asking me if I 
had read the Hew Testament, and I said I had, and in 
the end I promised to go to church with her next Sun- 
day and read a chapter of St. John every night for a 
week.” 

“ Did you promise? ” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 235 

“Yes — why not? If it pleases her, it’s very little 
bother. It would have been rather a joke if Fd asked 
her to come to the synagogue with me in return. Fm 
sure she wouldn’t have done it.” 

“ She is not likely to make a convert of you, is she? ” 
said Alison. 

“ Certainly not,” said Sassoon. “ I have never seen 
any reason to wish for a more satisfying or noble reli- 
gion than Judaism. I don’t think, in the main, there is 
one. But,” he hesitated, “ one has, to a certain extent, 
to suffer for one’s belief. In some ranks it interferes in 
material ways, from Saturdays down. With a fellow 
like me — well, you couldn’t guess how often the fact 
of being a Jew trips one up, and makes people look 
askance at you.” 

“ Is that really the case now? ” said Alison. Sas- 
soon had never talked, never, she thought, felt like this 
before. Was it due to Viva? 

“ Indeed it is. Plenty of Christians down in my 
district consider it an enormous effort and condescension 
to let me help them or to come to my meetings and 
clubs. And educated, refined people don’t like the idea 
of closer relations with a Jew. I don’t wonder, from 
your point of view. But I do feel it. Miss Carnegie,” 
said Sassoon, still with an odd hesitation in his voice. 
“ For instance, if I wanted to marry a Christian 
lady ” 

“ But,” said Alison, “ you are quite determined only 
to marry a Jewess, aren’t you? ” 

“ I — don’t know,” said Sassoon, very slowly. 


236 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

Alison, looking at him, saw a slow red rising into his 
face, and discerned a certain very new nervousness in 
his manner. 

She felt rather uncertain what to say. It was abso- 
lutely certain that to many — perhaps to most people — 
his Judaism would stand in the way. 

“ I see,” said Sassoon, “ you agree with me. Of 
course, I know lots of girls would marry me because I 
am well off — if I was a thug or a Fantee Indian. But 
that’s not the sort I mean.” 

“ I dare say with some people your religion would 
stand in the way,” said Alison thoughtfully. “ I think 
myself that a man’s character is of infinitely more im- 
portance than his particular creed. If you should care 
about a Christian girl, Mr. Sassoon, take your chance 
and give her hers, and don’t waste time imagining 
prejudices for her.” 

“You really think so?” Sassoon said, brightening. 
“ Mind you, I want to be honest — a Jew I am and a Jew 
I shall remain.” 

“ I really think so,” said Alison, touched with the 
sudden expression in Sassoon’s handsome dark eyes. 


CHAPTEE XII. 


Vivien and Sassoon sat on the top of a rock and 
quarrelled. 

A personally conducted expedition to a Koman fort 
had been forced upon Meredytli, and, as Alison had 
joined the party, Vivien had promptly done the same. 

A large contingent from the hotel had driven over 
on the coach and wandered about under the guidance 
of a bare-legged old woman, who did not appear very 
well posted for her position as guide, which she prob- 
ably owed to her English. She “ jaloused ” that a man 
they called Ceyser had somewhat to say to it all, she 
didn’t rightly mind what, and she acknowledged she 
was doubtful whether some successive mounds owed 
their existence to Druids or sappers and miners — she 
was sure she had heard tell it was one or the other. 

The tourists had inspected the fort and made every 
sort of remark thereon, from learned to imbecile. A 
couple of men had entered into hot argument over dates 
and indications, and an engaged couple had been lost 
from the very beginning. 

One recalcitrant maiden, forced by her parents to 
come and improve her mind while she desired to re- 
main at the hotel and play tennis and sit in corners with 
16 237 


238 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


chosen friends, diversified the proceedings by insisting 
on keeping her eyes shut, and avoiding all possibility of 
gaining information with a resolution worthy of a better 
cause. 

Several old ladies grumbled at Meredyth’s want of 
information, obviously considering it part of his busi- 
ness to know all about Roman forts. Sassoon soothed 
and instructed them, inventing freely. 

Vivien, content while her father was occupied in 
arranging for afternoon tea and the transport of an old 
lady who was determined to see the fort and incapable 
of walking there, had joined Sassoon and Alison, and 
wRen tea was over had submitted to being sent with him 
to climb for a view. 

But she took care not to let the tea party out of 
sight. 

When she saw Meredyth, with a few last directions, 
saunter off with Alison, she became restless. 

She proposed to Sassoon that they should get down 
and join the others, and then took exception at the 
alacrity with which he appeared to accept the idea. 

“ Considering that you have jumped upon me at 
every second word, that’s not so very wonderful,” said 
Sassoon calmly; “but until you suggested going I was 
very happy and comfortable, and just about to ask if 
you would mind a pipe. Now that I’m up ” 

“ Now that you have gone to so much exertion, cer- 
tainly we must go,” said Viva. 

They scrambled down the rock, but for some time 
Viva’s search proved unsuccessful. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 239 

Alison and Meredyth seemed to have disappeared. 

Once she remarked to Sassoon on their absence with 
elaborate carelessness, but she did not like to say any 
more or to acknowledge that she was looking for them. 

It fidgeted her when Sassoon stopped to talk to some 
girls, to help stray old ladies over the rocks, to fraternize 
with a group of ragged children. She called him on im- 
• patiently. 

Finally, Meredyth and Alison were discovered in a 
large cave, sitting on the rocks and talking with sus- 
picious earnestness. 

Their two figures stood out dark against the mouth 
of the cave, with a sharply defined curve of sea and sky 
behind them. 

The white waves rushing in pressed a little and a 
little farther on with the rising tide. The shiny, green 
sea-weed on the rocks marked the limit of their power, 
and puddles here and there, which the last tide had left 
behind. The waves as they came dashed themselves 
first against one side of the cave, smooth with their 
centuries of effort, and then against the other, after- 
ward breaking into spray on the damp roof and falling 
back on the rocks. 

The sound of the sea was so loud that Meredyth 
and Alison did not hear the other two till they were 
quite close, and Viva was sure she read guilt in their 
start. 

“ Viva, is that you? ” said Alison. “ Come here, and 
see how oddly these rocks are coated over with tiny 
shells. And there is the queerest little beast in this 


240 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

puddle beside me. Who knows anything about shell- 
fish?” 

“ Surely,” Meredyth said, “ there is no subject on 
which Sassoon can not inform us? ” 

Alison interposed hastily. 

“ And in a cave just a little farther on there is a 
capital echo. Viva, you and Mr. Sassoon ought to go 
on and hear it.” 

Vivien looked at Alison indignantly. How dared 
she so openly and shamelessly show her desire to get 
rid of them? 

“ I don’t care to go. I am sick of echoes,” she 
said. 

“At what period of your life have you met with 
such a superfluity? ” said Meredyth. “ You had much 
better go and listen to one more.” 

Vivien seated herself resolutely on a rock, and pro- 
fessed an entire want of interest in echoes, and Mere- 
dyth looked at Alison and laughed. 

Sassoon, on the contrary, declared himself too tho- 
roughly a cockney to afford to miss a chance of extend- 
ing his experiences. 

“ Please come with me, Miss Carnegie,” he urged; 
“it won’t take us long, and you are not so superior as 
Miss Meredyth. Do come, please.” 

Alison was not very willing. She had wanted Viva 
and Sassoon to go together, and she was in the middle 
of a rather serious conversation with Meredyth. 

But Sassoon had a spoilt child fashion of insisting 
on his own way, and she yielded. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 241 

The other cave was wider and longer, and there was 
quite a little gravel strand between the rocks and the 
sea. Sassoon planted himself on a rock in a very coim 
fortable and settled position. 

“ Miss Carnegie,” he said, “ do sit down, just for a 
few minutes. I want to talk to you badly, and I am 
afraid to speak above my breath for fear I should hear 
my inanest remark echoed all over the place.” 

“ It must really be only for a minute. The others 
are waiting for us.” 

“ Let them wait,” said Sassoon calmly. “ I beg your 
pardon, Miss Carnegie, I meant to say, please let them 
wait. There’s a lovely rock for you to sit on, with an- 
other for a back. Are you absolutely comfortable? Miss 
Meredyth has been amusing herself for the last half 
hour saying all the nastiest things she could think of 
to me.” 

“ I suppose you have been quarrelling.” 

“ She has been quarrelling. She told me, for one 
thing. Miss Carnegie,” Sassoon’s, tone was half mock- 
ing, and veiled, Alison fancied, some annoyance — “ she 
told me my name was ridiculous. I dare say it is in 
these days.” 

Sassoon was playing with gravel pebbles he picked 
from the strand, flinging them against the sides of the 
cave and into the waves. He did not look up. 

“ Viva is a silly little girl. I am sure she was only 
in fun.” 

“ But I am inclined to think she is right.” 

Sassoon looked at Alison suddenly and anxiously. 


242 the freedom of henry meredyth. 

though he went on in a resolutely light tone and with 
a laugh. 

“For instance, there’s this. A fellow can say to a 
lady he likes, ‘ Call me George,’ or ‘ Henry,’ hut if he 
says, ‘ Call me Abram,’ it makes a farce of the whole 
thing.” 

Alison laughed in spite of herself. Sassoon looked 
so boyish, and so vexed and mortified in spite of his af- 
fected carelessness. 

“ Don’t be too thin-skinned,” she said. “ If a girl 
cared for you, it wouldn’t make any difference if your 
name was Melchisedec. As far as I am concerned, I 
don’t think Abram is a pretty name, but now it is so 
connected in my mind with you that I have grown to 
like it.” 

Sassoon turned on her a suddenly radiant face. 

“ Have you really? Miss Carnegie, would you be 
so very, so aivfully kind as to call me by my name if you 
don’t think it too hideous?” 

“ Of course I will. . I shall like it.” 

“ Thank you so much. And — you don’t think me 
too awful an ass to have minded such a trifle ? ” 

Alison smiled to him. 

“ I’ve been thinking lately that I am a conceited 
fool. I talk too much, and I think too much of myself 
and my plans and my stupid book, and make an ass of 
myself generally.” 

“ This is quite a new departure.” 

“ Yes, for I’ve been too crossly conceited to see my- 
self. But there’s Mr. Meredyth always rotting me, 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEEEDYTH. 243 

and he does make me feel a fool sometimes, Miss Car- 
negie.” 

Alison listened in surprise. A little self-deprecia- 
tion would do Abram Sassoon no harm, hut she could 
not bear the depression in the boy’s voice. 

“ You see it’s well enough for him. He takes 
life easy, and doesn’t care much about anything. But 
I get so hot. Things don’t excite him or hurt 
him.” 

“ Never mind Mr. Meredyth. Don’t worry over 
yourself, my dear boy. It’s much better not to he too 
introspective. Come, we must go back.” 

Sassoon jumped to his feet. 

“ Hang it all! I’m incorrigible!” he said. “ I’ve 
been prosing away as usual. You should have stopped 
me.” 

“ Don’t let yourself feel things disproportionately,” 
said Alison. 

“ I don’t know what I shall do when I get a big 
trouble,” said Sassoon, looking gravely straight ahead 
of him. “ Miss Carnegie,” he turned to her suddenly, 
“ please remember I am not like Mr. Meredyth. I have 
a great — an enormous — capacity for pain.” 

“ And please remember,” said Alison sharply, “ not 
to judge other people you know nothing about.” 

Sassoon was penitent at once — so penitent that Ali- 
son, who was fond of him, relented at once, and they 
returned to the others very amicably. 

Certainly an awakening was coming to Sassoon. He 
was egotistic even in the way he realized his egotism, 


244 THE FREEDOM of henry meredyth. 

and vain in regretting his vanity, but it meant much 
that he recognised them. 

His words about Meredyth, with their stratum of 
truth, had vexed her, and finally drove out her thoughts 
of Sassoon. 

Had Meredyth really no deep feeling, or rather did 
he refuse to let himself feel deeply? 

She wondered as she walked back by his side to the 
coach and drove home, still beside him. 

Sassoon, in sudden rollicking spirits, had taken pos- 
session of Viva, and was making her laugh herself back 
to good temper. 

In the constant noise and chatter kept up by them 
and the rest of the party Meredyth’s silence and Alison’s 
passed unnoticed. 

Meredyth was in one of his most hopeful moods. 
A suggestion from Alison in the cave of approaching 
departure had at first greatly depressed him. Her com- 
ing had so completely changed and brightened his whole 
life; he had appreciated and admired her with the ex- 
ceedingly mixed background of the hotel a thousand 
times more than ever before. And he wanted her. 

But as he and Viva sat almost in silence in the cave, 
a resolution had grown slowly up in his mind. Alison 
was a woman old enough and quite awake enough to 
understand his position fully. He convinced himself 
that in asking her to marry him he would be doing her 
no wrong. 

She could choose. 

He convinced himself step by step that it was indeed 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 245 

due to her to give her the choice. He was inwardly 
and characteristically sure that she cared for him, and 
perhaps expected him to speak. 

She must find her life lonely, and, as for his posi- 
tion as a divorced man, lots of men similarly placed — 
lots of men even on whose side was the wrong — had 
married good women and been very happy. 

Vivien would marry Sassoon, and the other children 
adored Alison; it would be the making of them to have 
her. 

Then, though he had at present no money, only one 
life stood between him and both rank and money. Were 
an accident to happen to his brother, he would be a 
most excellent match for Alison. 

And so many things might happen. Of course, he 
didn’t want Jack to come to grief, but one must be pre- 
pared for all things. 

Last winter Lord Meredyth had been thrown from 
his horse in the hunting field and been unconscious for 
hours. The doctor had said that if his head had touched 
the stone a hair’s breadth more to the right he could 
have done nothing. 

A hair’s breadth more to the right and Henry would 
have been Earl of Meredyth, with plenty of money. 
And Jack hunted three or four times a week. 

By the end of the drive Meredyth had convinced 
himself that his succession to Merevale was almost a 
certainty, and that it was his duty to ask Alison Car- 
negie to marry him. 

The idea brought a certain change into his manner, 


246 THE freedom of heney meredyth. 

which he was scarcely conscious of himself, but which 
Viva jealously noted. 

She noted, too, how, when he thought himself un- 
observed, he suddenly turned to Alison, touching her 
hand, and speaking to her in a whisper. 

“ But he shall never marry her! ” she said to her- 
self. 

In her room she wrote a long, passionate letter to- 
ller mother. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


Meredyth, having made up his mind, was content 
to bide his time. 

Alison noticed an indefinable difference in his man- 
ner to her all through the next day, and Viva noticed 
it too. 

Alison alluded once or twice to Thursday as her day 
of departure, and he made no remark. 

He was choosing his time elaborately in epicurean 
fashion. 

In the evening it came. 

The general public of the hotel were dancing, and 
it was a marvellous and wonderful scene. Every shade 
and variety of costume was there, and every shade and 
variety of dancing. 

One stout old gentleman revolved carefully round, 
clad in tweed knickerbockers. Another was in evening 
dress, complete with the exception of a pair of carpet 
slippers. A couple bounced round, he with his arm 
tightly grasping his partner’s waist and her hand firmly 
placed on his shoulder. 

Some were very unmistakably hot, and nearly all 
were happy. 

Alison had paused near the door to watch them. 

247 


248 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


Sassoon was dancing with Vivien, who was smiling 
into his face, and looking very bright and pretty. Ali- 
son hoped she was refraining from further home truths. 
When would she learn that men did not like to be 
snubbed, even by a pretty girl? 

Alice,” said Meredyth, “ come and dance with 

me.” 

Alison started and shook her head with a smile. 

“ You think I can’t dance,” said Meredyth, “ but I 
believe I can, though I haven’t tried for many a long 
day. Come, Alice.” 

“ I think I am too old for dancing,” said Alison. 

“ I only want you to dance once round.” 

“ And I have refused Abram Sassoon dozens of 
times. My dear Henry, what has put such an idea into 
your head? ” 

“ What on earth does that boy matter? You’ve a 
sort of pride in making yourself out old, but all the same 
you are going to dance with me.” 

Alison did dance with him. 

Once, twice, they went round the room, and then 
he drew her out through a French window to a sofa 
under shelter of a balcony. It was a warm evening, and 
there was only the softest breeze, ruffling Alison’s hair 
and touching her hot cheeks. The sand hills outlined 
themselves vaguely through the dusk, and when the 
music stopped they could hear the distant sound of the 
sea. 

Alison, with an increasing sense of embarrassment, 
tried in vain to think of something to say. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 249 

“ Alice,” said Meredyth, “ do you know why I 
wanted you so much to dance to-night? I don’t believe 
I have danced since I last danced with you — do you re- 
member when? ” 

“ I know,” said Alison with an effort, “ that you 
grew much too lazy and magnificent to dance.” 

“ But do you remember when we last danced to- 
gether? I remember perfectly. It was the night be- 
fore our engagement was broken off.” 

Alison still desperately struggled to ward off what 
she knew was coming. 

“ It is ridiculous,” she said breathlessly, “ for two 
sober, middle-aged people like ourselves to talk senti- 
ment. Let us go in.” 

But the word failed of its effect. 

Meredyth leaned forward, pulling his mustache and 
looking at her earnestly. 

“ It is no use trying to put me off,” he said. “ Alice, 
you must listen to me! You used to be very fond of me 
then — you used, indeed. Do you remember?” 

“Harry, don’t /” said Alison with a cry of sharp pain; 
“ it is all so dead and past.” 

“ But I must remind you, Alice,” said Meredyth 
very softly, “ because it is my only claim on you. If it 
wasn’t for that, I should never dare, failure as I am, to 
speak to you. But I haven’t forgotten, and, darling, I 
don’t think you have forgotten.” 

“You forgot for twenty years, Henry!” 

It was the only reproach Alison had ever made him, 
and it was wrung from her in the sharp pain of realizing 


250 THE FREEDOM of henry meredyth. 

what her life might have been and all the sweetness 
she had missed out of it. 

Meredyth slid his hand along the seat in the dnsk 
and took hers, holding it closely and warmly. 

“ More shame for me,” he said bitterly. “ Alice, I 
know it hurts you, I know it can’t be the same as it 
might have been, but let’s take our second best and be 
thankful — and forgive me.” 

“ It’s impossible, Harry. You know it’s impossi- 
ble.” 

The next dance had begun. The valse floated out 
to them through the open window, and the sound of 
many moving feet. One or two couples who had followed 
them into the open air had gone in, and they were quite 
alone. 

Meredyth spoke, after a moment’s silence. 

“ Listen to me, Alice. I’m a poor man; at my age 
I have no right not to be in a better position. It looks 
as if all the advantages were on your side. But, my 
darling, I think you would be happier with me than 
with any one else — I do, indeed. I don’t think you 
could marry any one else and begin freshly now. There’s 
so much between us. Do you know that you have called 
me Harry ’ twice this evening? I wonder how many 
years it is since you did so last?” 

“ I shouldn’t listen. Believe me, it is impossible 
now.” 

“ Look here, dearest, let me have a chance. You 
may think it is too late, but indeed with you I shall 
make something of my life; I’ll try so awfully hard. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 251 


Don’t send me to hell for a prejudice/’ Meredyth ended 
hoarsely. 

Alison had never seen him so much moved. She 
was trembling a little when she spoke. 

“ I wouldn’t, Harry. Hot if you and I were free to 
live our own lives. But you are not.” 

“ I am not? Do you believe that Evelyn ” 

“ Without Evelyn, there are the children.” 

“ And for their sake, if for nothing else; ” 

“ I don’t believe it would he for their good, when 
their own mother is alive. Henry, I can’t do it — I can’t 
marry you.” 

“ Darling, I can’t do without you. I want you des- 
perately, and I’ll try hard to make you happy — God 
knows I will. I do believe you would be happier with 
me than alone. Let us start fresh, Alice; let us begin 
again.” 

“ We can’t begin again,” said Alison. 

Meredyth moved nearer to her, looking at her with 
passionate eyes. His own pleading had roused him. 

“ Give me a fair chance,” he said; “ don’t answer 
now. Think, darling, think if you couldn’t he happy 
with me. Don’t answer; it’s no wonder I fight hard 
for my salvation. Say you’ll think, Alice; say you’ll 
try to remember.” 

Alison felt herself shaken and uncertain. She did 
not know what to say to him nor how to say it. 

“ I will think,” she said. “ It can’t alter anything — 
Henry, I am sure it can’t — but I will think.” 

“ God bless you, darling! ” said Meredyth passion- 


252 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

ately, and he stooped and kissed her hand once and 
again. 

Alison shivered and rose to her feet. 

As she turned, facing the window, she saw Viva 
standing, frahied against the light behind. How long 
had she been there and how much had she seen and 
heard? 

Meredyth, suddenly self-conscious again, turned on 
her with sharp anger. 

“ Vivien, what are you doing? It is time the lights 
were out. — Are you going to bed, Alice? I shall go 
round to the smoking-room.” 

He vanished into the dusk, unwilling to face his 
daughter’s sharp eyes, and Alison went into the room, 
half blinded by the light, with her head whirling. 

When she reached her own room she sat down by an 
open window and tried to think. 

The sound, and the soft, damp smell of the sea which 
came to her across the sand hills, helped her to calmness. 

Of late years her life had run so steadily and quietly 
she had not thought it was in her to feel so agitated, so 
unstrung, and uncertain. 

Alison was not given to pretences, even to herself, 
and she certainly could not pretend that Meredyth’s 
words were unexpected. 

She had feared them before she left London, and 
since her arrival she had been certainly sure what was 
coming. But she had not expected him to move her so 
entirely. 

She could not marry Meredyth. He had claimed her 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 253 

by their old love for each other, hut there was more pain 
than pleasure in recalling that now. 

She was no longer a young woman; her character 
was formed, and so was his. He could not take up his 
life and ambitions where he had left them, and she 
could not piece together her faith in him, and absorb 
herself in him. 

She had her own interests; she had built up a life 
for herself slowly and painfully, and she was happy and 
useful. 

If she married she felt she must give up her plans 
and interests. 

No man would be content with such a divided life 
as she would otherwise give him; certainly not Mere- 
dyth. He would insist on the sacrifice, scarcely realizing 
that it was a sacrifice, and expecting Alison to be con- 
tent, as she would once have been content, to be a wife. 
It was too late. 

And Meredyth was a divorced man. Alison had 
strong feelings and ideas on the subject; she held, and 
always had held, strongly to the opinion that divorce 
freed neither man nor woman to marry again. 

If she were to marry him, would she ever cease to 
feel that she stood in another woman’s place, in some 
sense wronging her? 

But yet she knew her marriage with him would help 
him. If she refused it was probable that some day an- 
other woman would fill the place; it might be one who 
would drag Meredyth down and be unkind to the chil- 
dren. 


254 THE FREEDOM of henry meredyth. 

The children were a great temptation, they, and 
the possibility that some day children of her own might 
fill the lonely places in her life. 

She would have something of her own; she would 
no longer help other people, remaining outside their 
lives. But it would cost her much. 

If she had married Meredyth long ago, she would 
have been a happier woman. But could she do it now? 

Alison could see no absolutely drawn line of right 
and wrong. 

There seemed to her a selfishness in the way she 
clung to her own life and career. 

She rose from her chair, and began to walk slowly 
up and down the room, trying to steady her mind by 
movement. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


Next morning a large Roman Catholic excursion 
party came by steamer to spend the day at Slanamul- 
lagh, and of course it rained. 

The unfortunates arrived, green with seasickness, 
and soaked to the skin. Many of the girls had only 
white cotton dresses and no wrap of any kind. They 
were a miserable and draggled party. Alison was 
glad of some occupation, and found her time well 
filled in getting some of the party dried and comfort- 
able. 

Later on, when they had been fed, they were taken 
to a big barn, and an effort was made for dancing and 
games. It was difficult, as there was scarcely more than 
standing room for the party, and some of the more sea- 
sonably clad preferred to stroll through the pouring 
rain and thick sea mist. 

The priests worked manfully, and Sassoon, in his 
element, proved very successful. He secured an old con- 
certina, and played it and shouted songs to them, and 
he routed out some musical talent in the hotel. 

Viva, with an anxious secret of her own on her mind, 
played the fiddle by his request, but then wandered 
away restlessly. 


255 


256 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

Sassoon was the success of the afternoon. He stayed 
in the barn till a certain element of cheerfulness had 
been restored, and a lightening of the rain was tempting 
the unfortunate excursionists to venture out. 

Then Alison tore him away with difficulty for a be- 
lated afternoon tea. 

As they passed into the hotel the coach drove up 
with Meredyth on the box, incased in waterproofs, from 
which the rain ran in streams and rivers. 

He sprang down, greeting Alison with an air of 
proprietorship which made her shrink into herself. 

She was glad of Sassoon as a protection; glad, too, 
that Meredyth was a great deal too wet to follow them 
into the house. 

The veranda was drenched with in-driving rain, and 
much too cold and wet to sit on. They found a cosy 
corner of the writing-room to have tea in, and lighted 
a fire for themselves. 

Alison was a little tired after her exertions. She 
leaned back in her chair, and her thoughts wandered off 
to Meredyth and her decision. 

She suddenly remembered Sassoon, and roused her- 
self with a start to find his dark eyes fixed on her face 
with a curious expression. 

“ Well, Abram,” she said cheerfully, “ you did won- 
ders in cheering up those poor people.” 

“ Miss Carnegie,” said Sassoon, “ may I ask you 
something? You won’t be annoyed with me?” 

“ I am quite sure I shan’t.” 

“ But first I want to say — do you think — if people 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 257 

care for each other — do you think that anything else 
matters? Do you think things like age or religion and 
so on really matter ?” 

Alison looked at Sassoon. He was apparently en- 
grossed with his teacup, and looked decidedly nervous. 

He w r as flushed and hot with the hot barn and his 
exertions; his hair, as it had a trick of doing, had 
worked itself into a fringe over his forehead, and the 
faintest dark line on his upper lip foretold a mustache. 
He looked so very young that Alison felt a misgiving. 
What wmild a household conducted by Sassoon and 
Viva be like? 

“ Your question is a very wide one, Abram. At the 
risk of being sentimental, if there is an honest love and 
respect in the question, I don’t think anything matters 
much.” 

“ Miss Meredyth,” said Sassoon, “ laughs at me and 
calls me a boy.” 

Alison fought with inward amusement. 

“ I think you have acted the part of a man for sev- 
eral years,” she said. 

Sassoon put down his cup and looked at her. 

“ You don’t consider me too young to — to — care for 
any one?” he said. 

Alison wondered what was coming, and how much 
confidence she was to receive. 

“ No, I don’t think so,” she said; “ you have been 
put in a responsible position very much younger than 
most men, and you have held it in a manly way.” 

“ Well, then,” said Sassoon, “ I want to ask you that 


258 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


question. It’s this: You have been kind enough to call 
me by my name; may I call you Alison ? 99 

Alison stared at him in the extremity of astonish- 
ment. What he said was so utterly different from what 
she had expected. 

For a moment she thought he must have taken leave 
of his senses; it was so unlike Abram Sassoon to be im- 
pertinent. 

“ My dear boy, what do you mean? ” she said. 

His face fell. 

“ I see,” he said, “ you think me impertinent.” 

“ Well, I do, the smallest trifle. You see, I am a 
great deal older than you ■” 

“ You said,” Sassoon interrupted, “ that that did 
not matter.” 

The merest surface misgiving crossed Alison’s mind. 
So incredible a misgiving that it did not rest with her. 

“ That was in a very different case,” she said. 
“ Abram, I want to talk about Viva; you know she 
doesn’t mean half she says.” 

“ What does it matter what she means?” said Sas- 
soon. He sprang to his feet and stood over Alison. 

“ I don’t care one atom whether Miss Meredyth 
meant three times as much as she said, or nothing at all. 

7 I am only thinking of you, Miss Carnegie; you must 
know I am only thinking of you! ” 

Alison was startled now with a vengeance. She was 
absolutely thunderstruck. 

She stared at Sassoon, astonishment, dismay, self- 
reproach chasing themselves through her mind. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 259 

What ridiculous crank had the boy got into his 
head? Was it in any wise her fault? But how could she 
have conceived the idea of such a thing? Even now she 
could scarcely believe that Sassoon seriously meant what 
he said. 

“ You said,” Sassoon went on, “ that age did not 
matter. What do a few years matter? I think there is 
nobody like you, Miss Carnegie — nobody. We have 
known each other for a long time — you said I was not 
too young — I shall be twenty-one in August.” 

The absurdity of it all began to conquer Alison. 
She felt her lips quivering, and suddenly turned aside 
her face to hide the suppression of a smile. 

“ I thought,” said Sassoon, “ that you understood — 
surely you understood? I can’t expect you to care — why 
should you? But I thought you understood what I 
meant.” 

His voice broke suddenly, and Alison felt all desire 
to laugh leave her. 

The bitterness of disappointment was crushing down 
upon him. Just at first he had been almost confident; 
he had always been able to get what he wanted. 

“ Abram,” Alison said, “ I didn’t understand — per- 
haps I ought — but I don’t see how I could ever have 
imagined. I thought it was Viva.” 

“Viva! How could any one look at her when you 
were there ! ” 

“But you must think how absurd this is. I am 
old enough to have been your mother. I remember see- 
ing you when you were quite a little boy, and I was not 


260 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 


even a very young woman. Be sensible, my dear 
boy.” 

Abram stood up very straight, evidently doing his 
best to pull himself together and face his disappoint- 
ment. 

“ All that is so very — infinitesimal, if you could care 
for me,” he said. “ Miss Carnegie, of course it’s a trifle 
to you, but it’s everything to me. I love you, and it 
wouldn’t matter if you were a hundred years older than 
I am.” 

Alison felt rebuked, also perplexed and direly 
ashamed of herself. 

At her age, having for years considered all question 
of love and marriage over for her, it was preposterous 
that within two days two men should so speak to her; 
it was ludicrous, it almost seemed to argue a lightness 
in her behaviour. 

She would as soon have expected Jossy to fall in 
love with her as Sassoon, and had observed no precau- 
tions in her treatment of him. That, she had consid- 
ered, had been one of the privileges of her age. 

“ Abram, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I am 
very, very fond of you, but ” 

“ I understand,” said Sassoon in a rough voice. “ I 
couldn’t expect anything else. It’s my infernal conceit; 
it’s not your fault.” 

“And you will try and be sensible and not worry 
yourself, dear boy? ” 

Alison put her hand on his arm, but he shook it 
off. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 261 

“ Don’t! ” lie said, turning away. But in a moment 
he added, “ I beg your pardon; you are very kind.” 

It was almost the first time Abram Sassoon had ever 
had anything denied him, and he felt it keenly. He was 
trying hard to bear it well. 

“ If — if you don’t want me,” he said, “ I’ll go out for 
a bit. I don’t want to worry you or to make an ass of 
myself — and — I don’t suppose my being older would 
have made any difference?” 

“ It wouldn’t, indeed. Remember, I am a settled- 
down, middle-aged woman, a great deal too old to think 
of falling in love with any one. But I hope you are not 
going to desert me as a friend; there is no one I should 
miss so much.” 

“ All right,” Sassoon said, with his face turned 
away. He left the room without looking at Alison 
again. Absurd, out of the question as it was, she saw 
he felt it bitterly. 

Left to herself, she laughed a little, with tears in 
her eyes. 

She remembered Sassoon once when he was a little 
boy in a blue velvet suit. She had been selling at a 
bazaar, and Sassoon had been brought by his mother 
to present a bouquet to the Princess of Wales, who 
opened it. Sassoon had been a graceful little boy, and 
Alison had taken him on her knee and fed him with 
sweets. 

Her life had been settled and her days of love-mak- 
ing over before he was in knickerbockers. 

She had thought her days of trying to manage peo- 


262 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

pie were over. She had tried to manage Viva and Sas- 
soon, and this was the result. She only hoped and 
prayed that Viva did not care. 

Sassoon was such a boy; he would soon forget, and 
Viva might console him. 

He had realized himself how impossible it was. 

She had been selfish, and too much engrossed with 
her own affairs and ideas. 

Even as she sat there, with tears for Sassoon in her 
eyes, she felt her thoughts drawn back to Meredyth and 
her own life. 

With Sassoon it was impossible that this fancy of 
his could be vital, though it hurt him sharply at the 
time; but with her and with Meredyth things had 
reached a very vital point indeed. 


CHAPTER XV. 


Hext day there seemed to be a general strain. 

The Meredyths, Sassoon, and Alison had a corner 
of one of the long tables to themselves at meals, and 
among them words lagged heavily. 

Meredyth and Alison made a little disjointed con- 
versation, hnt at lnnch he was away as usual with the 
coach, and all the effort fell on her. 

Sassoon was unhappy and awkward, and showed it 
boyishly. Vivien was nervously studying her father, 
and in his absence Alison, wondering if she might have 
been mistaken — if that letter to her mother would have 
been better unwritten, and would only lead to mis- 
chief. 

They all separated with relief when lunch was 
over. 

Alison spent the afternoon by herself. She did not 
feel that she could bear the talk and gossip of outsiders. 

She went for a long walk over the sand hills, get- 
ting back a little before the coach, to find Vivien pacing 
restlessly about the veranda. 

They exchanged some disjointed remarks, and Mere- 
dyth drove up in the middle with a contingent of new 
arrivals. 


263 


264 the freedom of henry meredyth. 

Vivien started forward, meeting her father with un- 
usual eagerness. 

When the new arrivals had been seen into the hotel, 
she startled Meredyth and Alison by saying nervously 
that she would walk a little way along the road — she 
was cold — she wanted exercise, 

Meredyth looked after her in amazement. 

“ Bless her!” he said; “hut isn’t it a trifle unex- 
pected? Who has ventured to suggest to her that her 
chaperonage w r as occasionally somewhat oppressive?” 

Alison, too, was surprised. She said nothing, biit 
stood leaning over the veranda rail beside Meredyth, 
waiting for what she knew must come, still full of that 
uncertainty which was so unusual to her. 

He turned to her, speaking tenderly, but confidently. 

“ When am I to have my answer, darling? ” 

“ You should have had it long ago, Henry, hut that 
I don’t know what to say to you,” said Alison. 

“ Then let me decide for you,” Meredyth said. He 
glanced round, and caught her hand. 

“ It will be yes, won’t it, Alice? ” 

“ But we must both think — think thoroughly first. 
We are neither of us very young, our lives have been 
completely different, and our characters are formed. I 
doubt our being happy together.” 

“ But I don’t. I know,” Meredyth said with a laugh, 
“ I shan’t be allowed to take life easily any longer; but 
never mind, darling, you shall ballyrag me as much as 
you like.” 

He was so cheerful, so sure of himself and her, that 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 265 


Alison felt her arguments and her power of resistance 
fading away. 

“ And there are my women and my work and 
writing,” she began, feeling herself fighting for de- 
feat. 

“ You shall give up nothing you don’t want to give 
up, my dearest.” 

Alison knew better. She recognised with a sharp 
consternation Meredyth’s use of a confident future tense. 

Jossy’s appearance was a relief. 

He had an unfortunate frog, incased in a small card- 
board box, to exhibit. It escaped several times and had 
to be recaptured, and Jossy put forward a. project of en- 
sconcing it in Milly’s bed, with a view to listening for 
her screams when she felt its cold body. 

Meredyth, annoyed by Jossy’s appearance, sternly 
discountenanced this idea. 

He would have sent the little boy away, but the 
arrival of a foursome of golfers, eager to recount their 
strokes and scores, made any hope of being alone out 
of the question. 

“ This evening! ” he said softly to Alison, and went 
away to dress for dinner. 

He was very happy. All was going well for him, and 
he saw before him the smoothing-out of his life. 

He found himself whistling as he dressed, a thing 
he very rarely indulged in. His whistle was tuneless, 
and even with only himself as audience Meredyth did 
not care to do things he did not do well. 

But this evening he whistled as he waxed his mus- 


266 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

tache, as he brushed his hair carefully over the bald 
spot, as he tied his tie in an accurate bow. 

He had absolutely no presentiment. 

He was standing in front of the glass in his shirt 
sleeves, giving a last twist to his mustache, when there 
was a knock at his door. 

He turned his head with “ Come in! ” on his lips, 
but before he had time to speak the door was opened 
hastily. 

Meredyth started violently; he took a step back and 
turned very white. 

“ Evelyn! ” he said. “ My God! ” 

Evelyn rustled into the room unhesitatingly. She 
was smartly dressed, though her dress was dusty and 
crushed, and she looked worn and excited. 

“ Yes,” she said, “ Eve come, Henry. And such a 
journey! Good heavens! I am perfectly worn out! 
Pity me, Henry, and be kind to me. I am very miser- 
able. Dear me, how bald you are getting! ” 

Meredyth looked at her. She was very little changed, 
so little that it seemed almost as if the whole last year 
were wiped out. 

He went hastily to the door and closed it, turning 
the key in the lock. 

Then he turned to Evelyn with set face. 

“ What have you come here for? ” he said. 

She sank into a comfortable chair. 

“ I am completely worn out. And no wonder! The. 
excitement and that awful journey! Eve been shaken 
to pieces on a vehicle fit for no Christian country, and 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 267 

for nights I have lain awake shedding tears, thanks to 
you!” 

“ I am obliged for your interest. But might I trou- 
ble you to say to what I owe this< — pleasure ? ” 

“You ask me that?” said Evelyn, and hurst into 
tears, “ when it is your conduct — in separating me from 
my darling children — in — in — behaving so disgracefully 
with Alison Carnegie. Oh, I wonder I have not gone 
mad with all I have suffered from you and — others!” 

“ You always had an original way of looking at 
things,” said Meredyth bitterly. “ Putting aside the 
question of where disgrace belongs, are you aware 
that you run the risk of compromising yourself seri- 
ously? ” 

“ Compromising myself! ” Evelyn stared. 

“ If you are found in the room of a man who — is not 
— your husband,” said Meredyth deliberately. 

Evelyn gave a cry of dismay. 

“ What do you mean, Henry? ” 

“ Exactly what I say. You have no more right here 
than the veriest stranger. What will Major Arkwright- 
Gage say? ” 

Evelyn sobbed convulsively. 

“ Don’t speak of him, the cruel wretch ! Henry, if 
you only knew how he has treated me •” 

“ Spare me the recital, I beg of you.” 

“And now, when I have come all this long, this 
fearful way, to see you and my darling children, all you 
want is to get rid of me — to turn me out. I shall die if 
you do, and the best thing perhaps! I shall be out of 


268 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 


your way. And yon and Alison Oh, yes. Viva has 

told me all — I know all! ” 

“ I am glad of that,” said Meredyth calmly, “ as in 
that case you know that you have no right whatever 
to interfere with my actions.” 

“ No right? No right to think of my darling Viva, 
my sweet little Jossy? Henry, I didn’t think even you 
could he so cruel. And if you knew what I have gone 
through! ” 

She sobbed bitterly. 

Meredyth stood meditatively. What she said was 
true; legally they were nothing to each other, hut there 
were always the children. 

What should he do? 

In a few cold questions he gathered from Evelyn’s 
sobbing replies that Viva had written to her, telling of 
Meredyth’s and Alison’s iniquitous proceedings, and the 
minute Evelyn had got the letter she had wired to Viva 
and started to come over. And Major Arkwright-Gage 
had spent all her money, and been cruel for a long time. 

She had left him and intended to devote any small 
remnant of her life to good works. And Henry must 
remember that those God had joined together man 
could not put asunder. 

Meredyth listened with half his mind. 

“ Look here, Evelyn,” he said, “ you must see it is 
impossible for you to stay here. Let me get a room for 
you and send you something to eat, and afterward I will 
drive you myself to a small hotel not more than twelve 
miles away.” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 269 

“ Drive me! Not twelve miles away! Henry, do 
yon want to murder me? ” 

“ My dear Evelyn, consider at least my reputa- 
tion.” 

Meredyth very deliberately began to put on his coat 
and waistcoat. 

His heart had sunk very low, and he did not know 
what to do, but he preserved his outward calm im- 
passiveness, which, as his wife, had so often irritated 
Evelyn to madness. It did now. 

She professed, amid sobs, a determination to see Ali- 
son at once. Had she to seek her through the hotel, she 
would see her. 

She must be confronted with this woman who 
wanted to usurp her rights and her children. 

“I regret to remind you that you have no rights.” 

“ And no children, I dare say you will say next! ” 

Meredyth laughed uncheerfully. 

“ Inconsequent as ever, I see,” he said. “ Evelyn, 
there is no possible use in your seeing Alison. You are 
absolutely powerless.” 

“ If you marry her, I will kill myself! Swear to 
me — swear to me, Henry, that you never will! ” 

“ I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Meredyth 
calmly. “ There is nothing I desire so much as that 
Alison should be my wife.” 

It was impossible to move Evelyn from the one point 
to which she clung. She must be confronted with Ali- 
son. If Meredyth did not send for her, she would her- 
self go in search of her. 

18 


270 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

At his wit’s end, fearing hysterics, which seemed im- 
minent, he proposed at last to take her to his sitting- 
room, where she should see her children. He reflected 
that most of the hotel guests would be downstairs ready 
for dinner. His sitting-room was only a few doors down 
the passage, and it would be something to get Evelyn 
out of his room. 

Vivien was waiting about the passage. She came 
up to her mother, taking her at once under her protec- 
tion, and facing her father defiantly. 

She would go and find Alison, she said, and started 
on her quest, daring her father with her eyes to forbid 
her. But Meredyth was quite undecided what to do. 

Only Milly was in the sitting-room. She was ready 
for dinner, in a white muslin frock with a sash, and she 
had seized a last few minutes for her painting. She 
was a secretive child, and it was her impulse to bundle 
it away when the door opened. 

Evelyn, with a little cry, held out her arms. 

“ My child! ” she said. “ Milly, come to me! ” 

But Milly rose to her feet, crimson, agonized with 
embarrassment, and did not move. She knew her 
mother had done something wicked, something she re- 
sented from its effect upon them all, half understanding 
it; and Milly had never been a favourite or cared much 
for her mother. 

She stood, awkward and embarrassed. 

“ Milly, darling, won’t you come to me? Aren’t you 
glad to see me? ” Evelyn said, and, going to the girl, 
she tried to kiss her. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 271 

But Milly gave an averted cheek, and wriggled her- 
self almost roughly. 

Evelyn stood looking at her for a moment with a 
quivering face. 

“ God help me!” she said; <tf you have turned even 
my children against me! ” 

And she threw herself into a chair, bursting into a 
passion of heart-broken weeping. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


The minutes passed very slowly. The dinner gong 
sounded through the house with a cheerful, common- 
place sound which made Meredyth realize his discom- 
fort keenly. 

Evelyn sobbed on with an abandonment about which 
there had ceased to be the least trace of affectation, and 
Milly stood uncomfortably changing from one leg to the 
other, and looking sulkily miserable. 

Her father, turning on her sharply, told her to go 
down to dinner. 

Then he brought himself to say a few words to Eve- 
lyn, speaking more gently than he could have imagined 
possible. 

When Alison came with Viva, there was another 
long, full silence. 

Evelyn raised her white, tear-stained face and gazed 
at Alison, who looked white and shocked. 

Vivien was the first to speak. She sprang to her 
mother’s side, turning fiercely on her father. 

“ What have you done to her? How have you made 
her cry so dreadfully?” 

“ Pray hold your tongue, Viva! ” said Meredyth. 

272 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 273 

“ Alison,” said Evelyn tragically, “ I know every- 
thing! ” 

Alison interposed in an expressionless voice not her 
own. 

“ Hadn’t Vivien better go? She might go to dinner; 
people will talk if we are all away. And, Evelyn, yon 
can’t want the child here.” 

“ I will not go away,” said Viva hotly. “ I will not 
leave my mother without some one to protect her.” 

“My darling!” said Evelyn caressingly. 

“It is impossible,” said Meredyth, “that Viva can 
remain. Even you must see •” 

“ I don’t see. Viva has always stood by me. It is 
thanks to her sharp eyes that I am here to prevent this 
treachery.” 

“Vivien, leave the room at once!” said Meredyth. 

Vivien hesitated for half a second. Then she moved 
nearer her mother, clasping her hand more firmly. She 
was very miserable, very determined not to leave her 
mother, and nnconscionsly comforted a little by a sense 
of age and importance. 

Meredyth looked at her and shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Very well, Viva. You shall have the pleasure of 
suffering yourself and of knowing that you make all 
this more painful for everybody concerned. — Alice, I 
am sorry you should be brought into a matter which 
ought essentially to be between Evelyn and myself.” 

Alison did not answer. She was struggling with an 
unreasonable sense of guilt. After a slight hesitation, 
she went over to Evelyn. 


274 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

“ Evelyn, yon are worn out,” she said. “ If you con- 
sider you have anything against me, let it rest till to- 
morrow. Indeed, my dear, I am very sorry for you.” 

“Let it rest till to-morrow— never! ” said Evelyn. 
“No, I don’t trust you! How do I know what would 
have happened by to-morrow? There’s nobody to be 
trusted. You, Alison, who stand up for women — you 
come behind another woman who is helpless and steal 
her husband and children ■” 

“ Evelyn, stop talking in this wild way! ” said Mere- 
dyth. “ You deserted your husband and your children, 
and you must suffer for it.” 

Evelyn clasped her hands, wringing them passion- 
ately together. 

“ And if I did, whose fault was it? I loved you — I 
did love you once, Henry, and I might have been a good 
woman. But you — oh, you were never what people call 
unkind — you only neglected me, sneered at me politely 
sometimes, never let me interfere with any plan or 
amusement, made me always feel that I was of no conse- 
quence to you. And now Oh, my God! I wish I 

never had been horn! ” 

Evelyn ended faintly. She was absolutely over- 
wrought and worn out. 

Vivien, bending over her, comforted her with small 
caresses, and bestowed fierce glances on the other two, 
who seemed to have fallen into the position of accused. 

Evelyn, regaining self-consciousness, began to mur- 
mur of “ those joined together by God,” “ devoting the 
remnant of my life to helping others.” 


THE FKEEDOM OF HENKY MEKEDYTH. 275 


“ There’s no good to be got out of this/’ said Mere- 
dyth grimly. “ I am going down to dinner. There is 
no good in setting more gossip than we can help afloat. 
— Alice, yon had better come.” 

But Alison shook her head. She felt that dinner 
would have choked her. 

“ Alison,” Evelyn said, “ you are just like the rest. 
Henry, I can’t expect to think of me — he never did. 
But you — if you were in my place, how would you feel 
if you saw another woman robbing you of your chil- 
dren ” 

“ Not of me, mamma,” said Viva quickly. 

“ Sending me to ruin— to ruin. I have nothing left 
— nothing! ” 

When Evelyn forgot to be affected her whole man- 
ner changed. Meredyth and Alison winced before her 
words. 

She turned to Meredyth suddenly. 

“ Give me another chance, Henry. For the chil- 
dren’s sake — for the sake of all you value in this world 
or the next, give me another chance! Indeed, if you had 
been a little kinder, I should have been a better wife. — 
Viva, my darling! — Alison, as you are a woman, beg 
him not to be hard! — Henry, I should never worry you 
or expect anything — never! And I should make you so 
comfortable ” 

“ Evelyn, you don’t know what you are talking 
about. It is absolutely impossible,” said Meredyth, 
drawing his breath thickly. 

In the following pause, which no one seemed able 


276 the freedom of henry meredyth. 

to break, the door opened and little J ossy came into the 
room. 

He was looking for his father, and held the card- 
board box with his frog tightly clasped in his hand. 

He stood in the doorway, a small, fragile figure, with 
his pale face and light hair. 

“ Papa, may I keep the frog here? ” he said. Then 
he realized a strange presence, and stopped. 

Evelyn, from her chair held out her arms, turning 
very white. 

“ Jossy! ” she said. 

Jossy turned his head in her direction, hesitating, 
suddenly flushing. 

They all watched him. Alison, after one glance at 
Evelyn, turned away. The anxiety in her face was terri- 
ble; it was not for another woman to look on. 

Jossy advanced a step toward her, suddenly begin- 
ning to tremble. 

“ Jossy,” said Viva, “ it’s mamma. Aren’t you going 
to speak to her? ” 

The words seemed to break the spell on Jossy’s lin- 
gering feet. 

He suddenly darted forward, throwing himself into 
her arms. 

“0 mamma, mamma! you’ve come back! I’ve wanted 
you so dreadfully! ” he cried. 

The frog, cast down on the floor, cardboard box and 
all, made its escape and hopped under the table. Jossy 
was beyond thinking of it. 

But when Meredyth and Alison were leaving the 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 277 

room he awakened to his father’s existence, turning 
round on his mother’s knee and holding out one hand 
to his father, while with the other he tightly clasped 
his recovered mother’s dress. His father had been very 
good to him for the last year, and he was a faithful 
little soul, and feared he might feel neglected. 

“ Papa,” he said, “ come and sit beside us. I am so 
dreadfully happy! ” 

Alison, turning away, went on down the passage 
alone. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


“ Alice,” said Meredyth roughly, “you are not 
going to let this alter anything? ” 

It was several hours later. Meredyth and Alison 
stood together on the veranda in the dusk of a damp 
summer evening. 

Meredyth faced her, fighting desperately against the 
look in her face. 

“ It must alter everything,” said Alison in a low 
voice. 

“You are going deliberately to throw me aside be- 
cause a hysterical woman has been deserted by her lover 
— for that’s what it comes to. It is Evelyn who is to 
blame. Why should it he for us to suffer? ” 

“I feel I am quite sure that there is no possible 
choice.” 

“Why should we both suffer for her selfish jeal- 
ousy? ” 

Alison shook her head. 

“I can’t deliberately set myself to break another 
woman’s heart, and to take a place which I feel — 0 
Henry! I do feel it — I have no right to. When I saw 

little Jossy hold your hand and his mother’s- ” 

278 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 279 

“ As a matter of fact, do you want me to take Eve- 
lyn back?” said Meredyth bitterly. 

“ No, I don’t. No, Henry; for the children’s sake, 
for yours, even for hers, I think that would be a hideous 
mistake. I only mean that you are not free — that no- 
thing can make you free while the children are 
there.” 

“ A nice position you place me in,” Meredyth said. 
“Do you think that I — that any man — can stand it?” 

Alison made no answer. Something in her manner, 
in the absence of the hesitation of the last few days, told 
him he had indeed lost her. 

With the knowledge sprang up a mad craving for 
her. 

His wooing had all along been too confident, scarcely 
whole-hearted; he had never realized until now how 
much the loss of her would mean. 

He turned suddenly, and, putting out his arm, drew 
her to him almost roughly. It was in his heart to take 
her in his arms and kiss her passionately, but something 
in her quiet confidence in him held him back, for once 
in his life, from doing what he greatly desired. 

He dropped his arm with a groan. 

“ My darling, for God’s sake, think what you are 
doing! Have mercy upon us both! ” 

Alison paused. It was not that she doubted what 
to say, but that she wanted to say it in the way to give 
him least pain. 

She saw in his face that he understood and felt the 
hopelessness of his pleading. 


280 THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 

“ Don’t wreck our lives for a sentiment,” he went 
on desperately. “ Evelyn has no deep feelings. She 
will have forgotten, while I, at least, am most miser- 
able. You have no right to do it, Alice.” 

“What would our lives together be after this? 
Henry, we are not a couple of children; we can bear 
pain. There’s no reason why we should not be friends.” 

“ Friends! ” Meredyth repeated the word in a rough, 
contemptuous tone. “ ‘ Let us be conventional and we 
shall be happy’ — that’s every woman’s creed. Damn 
such hypocrisy! ” 

Alison had nothing to say. 

“ And for my part ■” he began, but Alison, look- 

ing beyond him, suddenly stopped him with a word of 
warning. 

Following the direction of her eyes, he found Viv- 
ien had come out on the veranda. Dazzled by the light 
she had left, it was a moment or two before she saw 
them. 

Meredyth turned on her with a muttered oath. 

“You little mischievous fool! You may stop your 
prying now. You have done all the harm there is to 
be done.” 

“ I am not sorry,” said Viva, “ for anything that I 
have done.” 

But it took all her pride to keep tears from her eyes, 
and she bit her lip to stop its trembling. 

“ I dare say not. You don’t understand what you 
have done. Your infernal meddling has spoilt two lives, 
and been the ruin of your mother as well.” 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 281 

“ Henry, don’t/’ said Alison. — “ Vivien, I am snre 
yon meant all you have done for your mother’s sake. 
But it is true that you did not understand.” 

“ I understood well enough. I saw what you meant. 
If you send my mother away, I will go with her. I 
shall take care of her,” said Viva, fighting against the 
queer lost feeling every meeting with this new, changed 
mother brought. 

“ Alison, it is you who have made all the misery, 
and now I suppose you will triumph. l r ou will 
marry father — it doesn’t matter to you what becomes 
of us.” 

“ Vivien, listen to me,” said Alison gravely. “ You 
know I don’t break my promises. I am willing” — she 
did not look at Meredyth — “ to promise you that I will 
never marry your father.” 

Meredyth gave a half-suppressed exclamation. 

“ Is that true?” said Viva. 

“ I shall never marry your father,” Alison re- 
peated. 

Without another word Vivien flew into the house, 
eager to bring comfort to her mother. 

“Do you mean that?” said Meredyth hoarsely. 

“ Yes, I mean it.” 

He turned away in silence, and left her standing 
by herself. 

So it was all decided, decided past all possible future 
doubt. 

Alison was free to go back to her work, and she 
would be a lonely woman always. 


282 the freedom of henry meredyth. 

She asked herself no questions about the right and 
wrong of what she had done. From the first moment 
of Evelyn’s arrival she had felt that anything else was 
impossible. 

But the memory of Joss/s clinging arms around his 
mother’s neck made her heart ache. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


Next day, by the awkwardness of fate and Irish 
train arrangements, they had all to leave by the coach 
together. 

The people at the hotel had wondered and guessed 
there was something unusual in the air, and curiosity 
brought a good many of them into the neighbourhood 
of the veranda when it was time for the coach to 
start. 

Vivien was going with her mother. She had an- 
nounced her determination to do so in the morning 
firmly, not to say obstinately, and now she stood beside 
Evelyn, holding her wraps and watching over her jeal- 
ously. 

Jossy clung to his mother’s arm. From the very 
first he had had an intuition that he would lose her 
again, and he had followed her about, careful not to let 
her out of his sight. He had showed her his collections, 
and abandoned interest in his frog for the sake of his 
“ pretty, dear mamma.” 

But he had asked no questions. He had accepted 
the growing knowledge of her immediate departure with 
a child’s resignation and sense of powerlessness. 

283 


284 THE freedom of henry meredyth. 

But he held her arm tightly, with a strained, un- 
childlike look in his little face. 

Alison, quiet and grave, sat apart with her two 
boxes, exchanging occasional unavoidable farewells with 
people in the hotel; and Sassoon, a little puzzled, hov- 
ered round her, anxious to be useful, hut shy about 
offering. 

Meredyth walked restlessly about. He was not going 
to drive the coach, feeling the position would have been 
too farcical, and he did not know whether to go away 
or to stay where he was. 

When the coach drove up the strain of the last few 
minutes was almost unbearable. 

As the first box was put in Jossy’s courage sud- 
denly broke down, and he clung to his mother, choking 
down his sobs and trying to control himself. 

“ Take me with you, mamma, please take me,” he 
said. 

“ I can’t, darling; not now.” 

“ Please do, mamma. I’m not crying because I am 
naughty, really, hut because I want you so dreadfully .” 

Evelyn gently tried to unfasten his clinging fin- 
gers. 

“ I wish I could take you, my pet,” she said; “ per- 
haps I shall some day. But you must stay with your 
father.” 

“ But papa will come too. — Please come, papa,” 
Jossy pleaded, with the persistence of desperation, and 
over his fair little head Evelyn shot a glance of triumph 
at Alison. 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 285 


When the little boy’s despairing sobs became un- 
controllable, Meredyth told Milly sharply to take him 
away. 

In the fuss of the last few minutes Meredyth and 
Alison had a few moments apart. 

“ Have I your authority to do what I can for 
Viva? Perhaps I shall be able to persuade her to 
come to me later if — if she finds her present in- 
tentions can’t be carried out. I should love to have 
her.” 

“ Life with Evelyn will be the ruin of her.” 

“ Perhaps not. Evelyn has evidently quite broken 
with Major Arkwright-Gage, and Vivien may help to 
steady her. As for the girl herself, I think her 
great love for her mother will pull her through. And 
Evelyn says she means to devote herself to East End 
work ” 

“ Evelyn among the slums! Alison, you know well 
enough how much use she will be and how long it will 
last. I suppose that has come to nothing?” 

He made a motion of his head in the direction of 
Sassoon, who was helping Viva to her seat. 

“ I don’t kno.w. Perhaps some day. If Viva comes 
to me, as I hope she may, she and Abram will be im- 
mensely thrown together. Poor little Jossy! Perhaps 
you will send him to me for Christmas and the panto- 
mimes.” 

“You think of everybody,” said Meredyth bitterly, 
“ except me.” 

It was their parting. Evelyn had been watching 

19 


286 THE FREEDOM of henry meredyth. 

them jealously from the coach, and called impatiently 
to Alison. She touched Meredyth’s hand, and he helped 
her up. 

At the turn of the road she looked round, and saw 
him standing by himself on the veranda steps. 

A week later, at a cricket match at Lord’s, Lady 
Grace Bruce remarked to Mrs. Fraser-Latimer that Ali- 
son Carnegie was looking ill, and Mrs. Fraser-Latimer 
shook her head wisely, and suggested that she not im- 
probably felt the failure of her last hold attempt to 
marry Pat Meredyth. 

Lady Grace knew, of course, that Alison had 
always been in love with him, and report said Evelyn 
Meredyth had not been without reason for jealousy — 
people who set up for being good were always the 
worst. 

But was it not too outrageous of her to have fol- 
lowed the unfortunate man to a small hotel in the wilds 
of Ireland? Luckily, Pat was very capable of taking 
care of himself, hut it was said that he had had a narrow 
escape. 

Had Lady Grace ever heard of anything so bare- 
faced and audacious? 

And here Mrs. Fraser-Latimer had to pull herself 
up, greeting Alison Carnegie with an inquiry as to how 
she had enjoyed her visit to Ireland. 

Mr. Frazer-Latimer had an idea that Pat Meredyth 
was somewhere about that island — had Miss Carnegie 
happened to meet him? 


THE FREEDOM OF HENRY MEREDYTH. 287 

Among Meredyth’s set in London this was the ver- 
sion of the story which became prevalent, spreading in 
some occult way from the hotel at Slanamullagh. 

As time went on, it was the version which Meredyth 
himself grew to believe. 


THE END. 



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est voice now lifted in the world, the clearest, the bravest, with the fewest false notes 
in it. ... I do not see why, in reading his book, we should not put ourselves in the 
presence of a great poet again, and consent to put off our mourning for the high ones 
lately dead.” — IV. D. Howells. 

“ The new poems of Mr. Rudyard Kipling have all the spirit and swing of their 
predecessors. Throughout they are instinct with the qualities which arc essentially 
his, and which have made, and seem likely to keep, for him his position and wide 
popularity .” — London Times. 

“ He has the very heart of movement, for the lack of which no metrical science 
cculd atone. He goes far because he can .” — London Academy. 

“ * The Seven Seas ’ is the most remarkable book of verse that Mr. Kipling has 
given us. Here the human sympathy is broader and deeper, the patriotism heartier 
and fuller, the intellectual and spiritual insight keener, the command of the literary 
vehicle more complete and sure, than in any previous verse work by the author. The 
volume pulses with power — power often rough and reckless in expression, but invariably 
conveying the effect intended. There is scarcely a line which does not testify to the 
strong individuality of the writer .” — London Globe. 

“ If a man holding this volume in his hands, with all its extravagance and its savage 
realism, is not aware that it is animated through and through with indubitable genius — 
then he must be too much the slave of the conventional and the ordinary to understand 
that Poetry metamorphoses herself in many diverse forms, and that its one sovereign 
and indefeasible justification is — truth .”— Londoti Daily Telegraph. 

“ ‘ The Seven Seas ’ is packed with inspiration, with humor, with pathos, and with 
the old unequaled insight into the mind of the rank and file .” — London Daily Chronicle. 

“ Mr. Kipling’s ‘ The Seven Seas ’ is a distinct advance upon his characteristic 
lines. The surpassing strength, the almost violent originality, the glorious swish and 
swing of his lines — all are there in increased measure. . . . The book is a marvel of 
originality and genius — a brand-new landmark in the history of English letters.”—* 
Chicago Tribune. 

“ In ‘ The Seven Seas ’ are displayed all of Kipling’s prodigious gifts. . . . Whoever 
reads ‘The Seven Seas’ will be vexed by the desire to read it again. The average 
charm of the gifts alone is irresistible .” — Boston Journal. 


New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY’S PUBLICATIONS, 


BY S. R. CROCKETT. 

Uniform edition. Each, i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 

ADS * LOVE. Illustrated. 

“ It seems to us that there is in this latest product much of the realism of per- 
sonal experience. However modified and disguised, it is hardly possible to think that 
the writer’s personality does not present itself in Saunders McQuhirr. . . . Rarely has 
the author drawn more truly from life than in the cases of Nance and * the Hempie’ ; 
never more typical Scotsman of the humble sort than the farmer Peter Chrystie.” — 
London A thenceum. 

“ A thoroughly delightful book. ... It is hearty, wholesome, full of pleasant light 
and dainty touches. It must be regarded as one of the best things that Crockett has 
written.” — Brooklyn Eagle. 

r'LEG KELLY, \ ARAB OF THE CLTY. His 

^ Progress and Adventures. Illustrated. 

“ A masterpiece which Mark Twain himself has never rivaled. ... If there ever 
was an ideal character in fiction it is this heroic ragamuffin.” — London Daily 
Chronicle. 

“In no one of his books does Mr. Crockett give us a brighter or more graphic 

E icture of contemporary Scotch life than in ‘ Cleg Kelly.’ ... It is one of the great 
ooks.” — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

OG-MYRTLE AND PEAT. Third edition. 

“ Here are idyls, epics, dramas of human life, written in words that thrill and 
burn. . . . Each is a poem that has an immortal flavor. They are fragments of 
the author’s early dreams, too bright, too gorgeous, too full of the blood of rubies 
and the life of diamonds to be caught and held palpitating in expression’s grasp.”— 
Boston Courier. 

“Hardly a sketch among them all that will not afford pleasure to the reader for 
its genial humor, artistic local coloring, and admirable portrayal of character.” — 
Boston Home Journal. 

“ One dips into the book anywhere and reads on and on, fascinated by the writer’s 
charm of manner.” — Minneapolis Tribune. 

HE LLLAC SUNBONNET. Eighth edition. 

“ A love story pure and simple, one of the old-fashioned, wholesome, sun- 
shiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound hearted hero, and a heroine who is merely a 
good and beautiful woman ; and if any other love story half so sweet has been written 
this year, it has escaped our notice.” — New York Times. 

“The general conception of the story, the motive of which is the growth of love 
between the young chief and heroine, is delineated with a sweetness and a freshness, 
a naturalness and a certainty, which places * The Lilac Sunbonnet ’ among the best 
stories of the time.” — New York Mail and Express. 

“ In its own line this little love story can hardly be excelled. It is a pastoral, an 
idyl— the story of love and courtship and marriage of a fine young man and a lovely 
girl — no more ; but it is told in so thoroughly delightful a manner, with such playful 
humor, such delicate fancy, such true and sympathetic feeling, that nothing more could 
be desired.” — Boston Traveler. 





D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK, 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY’S PUBLICATIONS, 


By A. CONAN DOYLE. 

Uniform edition. i2mo. Cloth, $ 1 50 per volume. 

NCLE BERN AC. A Romance of the Empire , 

Illustrated. 

“ ‘Uncle Bernac’ is tor a truth Dr. Doyle’s Napoleon. Viewed as a picture of the 
little man in the gray coat, it must rank before anything he has written. The fascina- 
tion of it is extraordinary.” — London Daily Chronicle. 

“ From the opening pages the clear and energetic telling of the story never falters 
and our attention never flags.” — London Observer. 

ODNEY STONE. Illustrated. 

“ A remarkable book, worthy of the pen that gave us * The White Company,’ 
‘Micah Clarke,’ and other notable romances. ’ ’ — London Daily News. 

“ A notable and very brilliant work of genius.” — London Speaker. 

“ ‘ Rodney Stone ’ is, in our judgment, distinctly the best of Dr. Conan Doyle’s 
novels. . . . There are few descriptions in fiction that can vie with that race upon the 
Brighton road.” — London Times. 

HE EXPLOITS OF BRIGADIER GERARD . 

A Romance of the Life of a Typical Napoleonic Soldier. Illus- 
trated. 

“The brigadier is brave, resolute, amorous, loyal, chivalrous; never was a foe mor^ 
ardent in battle, more clement in victory, or more ready at need. . . . Gallantry, humor, 
martial gayety, moving incident, make up a really delightful book.” — Lo7idon Times. 

“ May be set down without reservation as the most thoroughly enjoyable book that 
Dr. Doyle has ever published.” — Boston Be&con. 

HE STARK MUNRO LETTERS. Being a 

Series of Twelve Letters written by Stark Munro, M. B., 
to his friend and former fellow-student, Herbert Swanborough, 
of Lowell, Massachusetts, during the years 1881-1884. Illus- 
trated. 

“ Cullingworth, ... a much more interesting creation than Sherlock Holmes, and 
I pray Dr. Doyle to give us more of him.” — Richard le Gallienne, in the London Star. 

“ ‘ The Stark Munro Letters ’ is a bit of real literature. ... Its reading will be an 
epoch-making event in many a life.” — Philadelphia Evening Telegraph. 

OUND THE RED LAMP. Being Facts and 

Fancies of Medical Life. 

“Too much can not be said in praise of these strong productions, that to read, 
keep one’s heart leaping to the throat, and the mind in a tumult of anticipation to the 
end. . . . No series of short stories in modern literature can approach them.” — Hart - 
ford Times. 

“If Dr. A. 'Conan Doyle had not already placed himself in the front rank of living 
English writers by ‘ The Refugees,' and other of his larger stories, he would surely do 
so by these fifteen short tales.” — New York Mail and Express. 







D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. NEW YORK. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


YEKL. A Tale of the New York Ghetto. By A. Cahan. 

Uniform with “The Red Badge of Courage.” i 2 mo. Cloth, 

$1.00. 

“ A new and striking tale ; the charm, the verity, the literary quality of the book de- 
pend upon its study of character, its * local color,’ its revelation to Americans of a social, 
state at their very doors of which they have known nothing.” — New York Times. 

“The story is a revelation to us. It is written in a spirited, breezy way, with an 
originality in the telling of which is quite unexpected. The dialect is striking in its 
truth to Nature.” — Boston Courier. 

“Is in all probability the only true picture we have yet had of that most densely 
populated spot on the face of the earth— the ghetto of the metropolis, rather the me- 
tropolis of the ghettos of the world.” — New York Journal. 

“ A series of vivid pictures of a strange people. . . . The people and their social life 
the author depicts with marvelous success.” — Boston Transcript. 

“ The reader will become deeply interested in Mr. Cahan’s graphic presentation of 
ghetto life in New York.” — Minneapolis Journal. 

“A strong, quaint story.” — Detroit Tribune. 

“ Every feature of the book bears the stamp of truth. . . . Undoubtedly ‘Yekl* 
has never been excelled as a picture of the distinctive life of the New York ghetto.” — 
Boston Herald. 


T 


HE SENTIMENTAL SEX. By Gertrude War- 
den. i2mo. Cloth, $1.00. 


“The cleverest book by a woman that has been published for months. . . . Suet 
books as ‘The Sentimental Sex’ are exemplars of a modern cult that will pot be 
ignored.” — New York Commercial Advertiser. 


“There is a well-wrought mystery in the story and some surprises that preserve 
the reader’s interest, and render it, when all is said, a stoiy of considerable charm.” — 
Boston Courier. 


“ An uncommonly knowing little book, which keeps a good grip on the reader up to 
the last page. . . . The author’s method of handling the plot is adroit and original.”— 
Rochester Herald. 


“ Miss Warden has worked out her contrasts very strikingly, and tells her story 
in a cleverly flippant way, which keeps the reader on the qui vive for the cynical but 
bright sayings she has interspersed.” — Detroit Free Press. 

“ The story forms an admirable study. The style is graphic, the plot original and 
cleverly wrought out.” — Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 


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